Seasonal stability and variation in diet as reflected in human mummy tissues from the Kharga Oasis and the Nile Valley

Stable carbon isotopes of the hair and skin of six Roman-Byzantine Period ( 400-700 AD) individuals from the Kharga Oasis, Egypt, were analysed in orde r to reconstruct degrees of dietary variability or stability in an oasis ec ology. These results are compared to previously studied contemporaneous ind ividuals who lived at sites from the Nilotic ecology near Wadi Halfa, in th e Northern Sudan. Residues extracted from the Kharga material appear to bel ong to C3 plants (such as trees) and probably are resins used in an artific ial mummification process. Lengths of hair representing up to a one-year pe riod of growth indicate that the oasis environment was unaffected by season ality, compared with the seasonal shifting of C3 plants (wheat, barley, fru its, vegetables) and C4 plants (millet, sorghum) at sites located along the Nile. The Kharga population consumed significantly greater quantities of C 3 plants and does not appear to have produced C4 plants locally, or importe d them in trade with Northern Sudanese populations. There are also no dieta ry differences between either males and females, or adults and children, wh ich suggests that status was not biologically defined. (C) 1999 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.