ABSTRACT
Pastoralism involves the exploitation of domesticated livestock and has been a vital component of human subsistence and surplus economies for thousands of years. By supplying their human caretakers with ready and renewable sources of milk, meat, fat, fiber, skins, and dung, livestock serve as an important source of subsistence and wealth in pastoralist communities. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) of human and animal skeletal tissues measure dietary intake and geospatially sensitive environmental inputs that capture the scalar dynamism of pastoralist movement and subsistence strategies that together inform pastoralist social networks and political organizations. This chapter reviews environmental carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotope dynamics in vegetation, hydrological, and geological systems with particular attention to the dynamic geological and environmental variables that influence the distribution of these isotopes at local and regional scales. Pastoralists are heavily concerned with providing their livestock with secure sources of graze year-round.
