More on Isotopic Analysis of Teeth and Bones Free

Wright comments: Many thanks to Turgut Dincer for his comments and corrections on Charles Day’s article, which reported our work on strontium and oxygen isotopes in ancient Maya skeletons. Dincer is correct; the paragraph describing oxygen isotopes in rainfall was poorly stated. In communications with Day, I suspect that I described the changes in the oxygen isotope ratio of rain across the Maya area in exactly the same manner as Dincer did in his final sentence. The patterns we see are a function of elevation, relative humidity, and the path of rainstorms across the landscape. Unfortunately, I did not catch this inaccuracy in a quick prepress reading of the article. Nonetheless, Dincer’s correction does not change in any way our interpretations of the data nor the implications of our work for Maya prehistory.