Tracing Migration and Social Stratification in Subadults at the Archaeological Site of Convento: A Strontium Isotopic Analysis

Within the bones, teeth, and other tissues of every person lies a series of elements that can be used to draw inferences about the life of an individual. For example, Carbon can be used to look at when someone might have lived through carbon dating methods, Nitrogen can be used to look at aspects of diet, and variations in Strontium ratios can be used to examine how people have moved and settled in different areas. Combining this information that Strontium can give in addition to other contextual information such as what someone might have been buried with, this special tool in the anthropological toolkit allows for the examination of not only how people have moved and migrated in the past, but what society might have looked like in terms of social stratification (status differences) as well. This study in particular focuses on these “strontium signatures” in the skeletal remains of subadults (infants to late adolescence/early adulthood) from the archaeological site of Convento in modern day Mexico. Convento dates back to AD 700-1200 and compared to other later sites, much less is known about the people who occupied the site in general. While the adult populations from this archaeological site have been studied more extensively in recent years, there is still much to be learned from the subadults in particular and how their lives mirrored the adults they were found among. In order to gain a better understanding of the subadults found at this site and accomplish these comparisons to the adults, samples of the bones and teeth of some of the subadults were taken to be tested for their Strontium ratios and compared to bone and tooth samples of adults from Convento, and from a later, better understood site called Paquime. Following the completion of this research, the information collected during this investigation will be published for others to utilize and reference for their own studies and investigations so that future migration studies may be conducted with subadults in mind. This information will also be offered to the Mexican government in the hopes that it can be utilized as an educational tool for visitors to the site and others involved in the development of the archaeological site in Northwest Mexico