ABSTRACT
Archaeological cattle remains from sites in temperate Europe, a C3 biome, have been widely used for the analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen from bone collagen as a comparative dataset for the interpretation of human palaeodiet. This chapter presents the isotopic results of sequentially sampled tooth enamel of undated cattle remains recovered from two early medieval cemeteries (ca. late fifth to eighth century CE) located in the northern Upper Rhine Valley in southwest Germany, a region that is dominated by C3 plants, especially during preindustrial times. The combined isotopic analysis of carbon and oxygen is used to test if 13C values show sufficient seasonal variability to enable the investigation of seasonal changes of cattle diet composed of terrestrial C3 vegetation. Strontium isotopes are used to establish if cattle were raised in the Upper Rhine Valley on local foods or if the animals and/or the fodder were imported from somewhere else.
