Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep Life histories from the Southside Cemetery, St. John's, Newfoundland: Insights into Royal Naval diet using stable isotopes Tricia Jessica Anne Munkittrick a, ⁎ , Tamara L. Varney b , Kelly-Anne Pike a , Vaughan Grimes a,c a Dept. Archaeology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL A1C 5S7, Canada b Dept. Anthropology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON P7B 5E1, Canada c Dept. Earth Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL A1C 5S7, Canada ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Stable isotopes Bone collagen Enamel carbonates 18th and 19th centuries Royal Navy Newfoundland ABSTRACT While the Southside Cemetery, St. John's, Newfoundland was excavated in 1979, previous historical and mor- phological investigations had been unable to distinguish between potential associations: Royal Navy, Royal Army, early Newfoundland settlers, and recent Anglican parishioners from the south side of St. John's harbour. Due to the difficulty of discerning between these hypotheses with historical and morphological investigations alone, stable isotope analyses of bone collagen and tooth enamel carbonate (δ 13 C COLL , δ 13 C CARB , δ 15 N COLL , and δ 18 O CARB )wereusedtoexaminethedietandgeographicoriginsofskeletalremains(n =21)fromtheSouthside CemeteryinSt.John's,Newfoundland.InordertodistinguishbetweenlocalandlikelyBritishorigins,datafrom these individuals were compared to bone collagen and enamel carbonate isotope values of a civilian population from St. Paul's Anglican Church, Harbour Grace, Newfoundland (n =6), and to published values from Newfoundland and the British Isles. These comparisons, along with a strong historical and archaeological context, suggest that individuals from the Southside Cemetery were associated with the St. John's Naval Hospital's use of the cemetery from ca. 1750–1825. This study then considers these data with previously pub- lished data of contemporaneous Royal Naval Hospital cemeteries within their historical contexts to better un- derstand naval rations and movement in the British Atlantic World. This re-examination of the data, with an emphasisonhistoricalandphysiologicalcontexts,highlightsfactorspreviouslyundervaluedthatlimittheability of stable isotope analyses to define the variability of naval rations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 1. Introduction During the fall of 1979, construction workers installing sewer lines uncovered human remains on the south side of St. John's harbour, Newfoundland that were co-mingled during their excavation (Fig. 1). The identification of the cemetery immediately sparked debate over who was buried at what became known as the Southside Cemetery (CjAe-54). Suppositions that the cemetery was associated with the St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church (1859–1960) (Evening Telegram, 1979a; Cousens,1960),werecounteredwithsuggestionsthatitwasthe earlier Royal Naval Hospital (ca. 1725–1825) (Evening Telegram, 1979b; O'Neill, 2003); both were located close to the excavation site. A previous 1903 report suggested that the cemetery was utilized by the Royal Navy, Royal Army, and some local civilians until the mid-19th century (Howley, 1903). While there were no known Royal Army Hospitals close to the cemetery, there were small numbers of locally- born residents who lived on the Southside (Daly, 2004; Young, 1999). Despite additional historical and skeletal research, the question of who was buried at the Southside Cemetery remains unanswered. There are no clear dates associated with the cemetery, though phasescanbeidentifiedthroughcartographicrecordsandthetimingof late 19th to 20th century construction around St. John's harbour. Historic records state that remains with military buttons were found in 1903 when the railway was constructed (Heagerty, 1928),thisgivesan absolute terminal date to the possible use of the cemetery. The navy used the same land in the early 1750s as a garden for a spruce beer brewery, giving the earliest date that the cemetery could have been used(Munkittrick, 2016).Unfortunately,theentiretimeperiodthatthe area could have been used as a burial ground overlaps with the active timelinesofallfourpossiblegroups,theRoyalNavy,RoyalArmy,local residents,andthecongregationofSt.MarytheVirgin.Theonlydatable artifacts found in 1979 were an English and Irish half-penny that were located within the eye sockets of one individual (Penney, 2016). These datetothelastquarterofthe18thcentury(Hett,1980),suggestingthat https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.02.016 Received 29 May 2018; Received in revised form 26 January 2019; Accepted 12 February 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: tjm877@mun.ca (T.J.A. Munkittrick). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24 (2019) 815–828 2352-409X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T