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Abstract:
This study represents one of the first applications of a novel oxidation-denitrification method to measure the nitrogen isotope composition of
tooth enamel in the archaeological record. Efforts
to measure nitrogen isotopes in tooth enamel
via traditional methods have not been feasible
given the low nitrogen content of enamel (!0.01
% wt.) Here we present nitrogen isotope data of
tooth enamel, which signiܪcantly expands the
existing geochemical dataset at Neumark Nord, a
high-resolution Middle Paleolithic (c125 kyr) site
in Germany and provides insight into the structure
of the paleo-food web at this locality, allowing us
to make inferences about the environmental and
ecological context of Neanderthals prior to the
arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe.
In our study, we measured Ƚ 15 N enamel values in
the tooth enamel of representative herbivore (n
" 5), omnivore (n " 1), and carnivore taxa (n " 2)
to reconstruct the paleoecology of the fauna at
Neumark Nord 2. Our results show that herbivores
have, on average, lower mean Ƚ 15 N enamel values (x"
5.3 ± 0.9 ‰) than omnivores (x" 7.7 ± 1.6 ‰) and
carnivores (x" 6.6 ± 1.8 ‰). A previous study of
herbivore Ƚ 15 N collagen at Neumark Nord 2 by Britton
et al., 2012 found evidence for differences in
dietary behavior between bovids and equids. We found similar patterning in Ƚ 15 N enamel values for
the same taxa although the magnitude of the
difference between taxa is somewhat smaller in
enamel (1.2 vs. 2.0 ‰) compared to collagen.
