Compare methods

	Stable Isotope Paleodiet & Mobility Analysis	Ancient DNA Analysis	Lipid Residue Analysis
Field	Archaeology	Archaeology	Archaeology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	2004	2008
Originator	Synthesis of stable-isotope bioarchaeology; strontium methodology reviewed by R. Alexander Bentley	Svante Paabo and colleagues (foundational methodology)	Richard P. Evershed and the Bristol organic-geochemistry school
Type	Methodological pipeline for trophic, dietary-source, and mobility inference from skeletal isotopes	Laboratory and computational pipeline for recovering and authenticating genetic data from archaeological remains	Analytical pipeline for identifying foodstuffs from organic residues preserved in pottery
Seminal source	Bentley, R. A. (2006). Strontium Isotopes from the Earth to the Archaeological Skeleton: A Review. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 13(3), 135-187.	Paabo, S., et al. (2004). Genetic Analyses from Ancient DNA. Annual Review of Genetics, 38, 645-679.	Evershed, R. P. (2008). Organic Residue Analysis in Archaeology: The Archaeological Biomarker Revolution. Archaeometry, 50(6), 895-924.
Aliases	Carbon-Nitrogen Collagen Isotope Analysis, Trophic Spacing Analysis, Bioarchaeological Isotope Methodology, Collagen Quality Screening	aDNA Analysis, Archaeogenetics, Ancient Genomics, Palaeogenetics	Organic Residue Analysis, Pottery Lipid Analysis, Absorbed Residue Analysis, Biomarker Residue Analysis
Related	2	2	2
Summary	Stable isotope paleodiet and mobility analysis is the methodology by which bioarchaeologists turn the isotopic chemistry of bone and tooth into quantitative statements about what people ate and where they lived. It rests on a chain of disciplined procedures rather than a single measurement: screening extracted collagen for diagenetic integrity using carbon-to-nitrogen atomic ratios, anchoring human values to a locally measured faunal baseline, quantifying trophic position from nitrogen-15 spacing, partitioning C3 versus C4 and marine carbon sources using the offset between collagen and apatite, and reconstructing residential mobility from biologically available strontium isotopes in tooth enamel. Bentley's review of strontium in the archaeological skeleton and Evershed's account of the biomarker revolution together frame the geochemical and analytical principles that make these inferences defensible.	Ancient DNA analysis recovers genetic information from the degraded remains of past organisms — human and animal bones and teeth, and increasingly sediments — and uses it to reconstruct kinship, ancestry, population history, sex, pathogens, and domestication. Because DNA fragments into ever-shorter pieces and accumulates characteristic chemical damage after death, and because a handful of modern molecules can swamp the few authentic ones, the field is defined less by sequencing itself than by an exacting protocol of clean-lab extraction, contamination control, and authentication. The foundational reviews by Svante Paabo and colleagues set out the principles that distinguish genuine ancient sequences from contaminants, and the move to next-generation sequencing transformed aDNA from a fragile curiosity into a routine source of genome-scale data.	Lipid residue analysis identifies the foodstuffs once processed, stored, or cooked in ancient pottery by recovering and characterizing the fatty molecules absorbed into the porous ceramic fabric. Lipids are hydrophobic, comparatively stable, and become trapped within vessel walls, where they can survive for millennia long after proteins and DNA have vanished, making them the most informative class of organic residue for reconstructing pot use. Richard Evershed and the Bristol school turned this insight into a rigorous analytical program — the 'archaeological biomarker revolution' — combining gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify diagnostic compounds with compound-specific carbon-isotope analysis of individual fatty acids to distinguish, for example, dairy from carcass fats and ruminant from non-ruminant sources. The result is direct molecular evidence of past diet and culinary practice from the vessels themselves.