Gilan Iron Age diet: based on chemical analysis on samples of human and animal bones

Trace element analyses was carried out using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer and XRF on a small collection of bones and teeth from horse and human bone samples to check the ratio of Strontium and Calcium and other elements like zinc and copper. Interestingly the copper representation in humans is much higher compared to that of Sr/Ca. This shows that their diet consisted mainly of animal meat and fish rather than other vegetarian foods. However, the high representation of Copper found in horse bone samples makes this scientific evidence an anomaly and needs to be seen with caution and to be checked with a larger set of samples. Similarly too the Zinc samples have a very weak representation. Of course the bones examined in this study came from museum repositories and did not accompany the soil samples hence the values presented here represent only the bone chemistry.