Outline for the publication of isotopic results in biological anthropology and archaeology

Abstract

The use of stable isotope analysis (SIA) in biological anthropology and archaeology has experienced an exponential increase during the last 25 years. As a reflection of this global expansion, these techniques began to be applied in Argentina during the early nineties, noticeably growing in number from the year 2010 onwards. As a result of the recent expansion of this line of inquiry in fields that are alien to their basic principles, a series of inconsistencies in the use of common terminology, and variations in the way the results of the analyses are published can be observed. Thus, this work carries out a review of the scientific publications in Spanish that present isotopic information within the fields of biological anthropology and archaeology in Argentina, in order to acknowledge the expansion in the use of stable isotope analysis in these disciplines on a local scale. Our work also presents a discussion of some basic concepts related to the nature of the data and a “best practices” guide to publish the results of stable isotope analysis in Spanish.