Dietary microfossils from Rapa Nui dental calculus: Does regional variability provide evidence for subsistence practices?

recovered and the location of permanent water sources. PROJECT BACKGROUND Studying microfossils embedded in dental calculus may represent dietary and/or occupational signatures accumulated during life, and offers a direct view of human-environment relationships. While recent stud-ies have reported on the successful recovery of micro-fossils from dental calculus, we think this study is the first to employ high frequency sampling from a single population and the only calculus study from Polyne-sia. Our sampling strategy provides evidence for sub-sistence activities and the geographic distribution of dietary resources. The use of scanning electron mi-croscopy (SEM) to identify biogenic silica allows for the collection of high-resolution topographically re