This summer, Sarah has been preparing bone samples of the burial site of Destelbergen for strontium isotope analysis. The site is situated along the river Scheldt. She aims to compare the results of the Metal Ages population with those of the Roman Period population and examines if the location at a riverbank is of any influence. Do people along rivers travel differently than people on ‘drier’ ground? Does their landscape situation affect their diet and thus their strontium intake? And how does their behaviour shift over time?
Eagerly awaiting the measurement results of the extracted strontium, Sarah has also been busy refining her network analysis skills, which she uses to compare strontium ratio diversity of people within and between sites. The method translates statistical information on the strontium results to a map environment, so the information can be interpreted from a spatial (or landscape) perspective.
