Identification of alkaline amendment sources (slash and burn versus marling) for cereal crops grown in the North of France: A multiple isotope approach (87Sr/86Sr, δ44/40Ca, δ88/86Sr)

Abstract

Early farmers used at least two types of agrarian amendments that could raise pH and base saturation levels to allow the cultivation of cereals: marling and plant ash. Ash can be input in many different ways: felling and burning in place, transferring plant material from wastelands and spreading the ash, charring sod or peat blocks, burning stubble after harvest. Marling includes all the practices of amending limestone, from marl to chalky limestone composed of 99% CaCO₃. In order to understand the evolution of these agricultural practices, it is important to identify which of the two techniques was used to amend cereal crops in the past. In order to test the potential of δ^44/40Ca-δ^88/86Sr-⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr multiple isotope approach for archaeological samples, we first applied the technique to currently grown crops, amended either with marl or with ash from freshly-cut and burned trees. We found that this approach makes it possible to discriminate cereal grains amended either by marling (less radiogenic Sr) or with tree ash (more radiogenic Sr). We also identified a positive correlation between stable Ca and Sr isotope values, suggesting that the Ca and Sr came from similar sources and had undergone similar mass-dependent isotopic fractionation mechanisms. Consequently, we later on mainly focused on stable and radiogenic Sr isotopes. Stable Sr isotope fractionation was also observed between different locations, different organs of a given cereal species and between different cereal types, but also within the same cereal species or the number of grains studied for a given locality, pointing to biological fractionation combined with source variation.