Bioavailable Soil and Rock Strontium Isotope Data from Israel

Abstract. Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) of biogenic carbonates such as bones and teeth reflect the local sources of strontium ingested as food and drink during their formation. This has led to the use of strontium isotope ratios as a geochemical tracer in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food studies and forensic sciences. In order to utilise strontium as a geochemical tracer, baseline data of bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in the region of interest is required, and a growing number of studies have developed reference maps for this purpose in various geographic regions, and over varying scales. This study presents a new data set of bioavailable strontium isotope ratios across Israel, from rock and soil samples. This data set may be viewed and accessed both in an Open Science Framework repository (doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/XKJ5Y (Moffat et al., 2020)) or via the IRHUM (Isotopic Reconstruction of Human Migration) database (Willmes et al. 2014).