Abstract:

Since 1970s, stable isotope analyses of biomaterials from archaeological sites have played more and more important roles in archaeological and bioarchaeological fields and become one of important components of current archaeological research. However, international and domestic scholars have always considered it as an analytical technique and never thought it as an independent discipline. Given the importance of the isotopic analysis and the urgency of discipline development, it is timely for us to promote it from technique level to discipline level. In this paper, the name of stable isotope analysis was renamed as stable isotope bioarchaeology for the first time, abbreviated as isobioarchaeology, as an important branch of bioarchaeology in broad concept. Furthermore, the definition, overview of research history, analytical principles, and targets of isobioarchaeology have been introduced in detail. In particular, two new analytical principles, “You are what you are” and “You are where you live”, were proposed for the first time except two previous principles, “You are what you eat” and “You are not what you eat”. Finally, the perspective on conducting in-depth isoboarchaeological researches was discussed.

Key words: Stable isotope bioarchaeology, You are what you eat, You are what you are, You are where you live, You are not what you eat