The results, while subject to the analytical uncertainties that always accompany isotope work on small samples, suggested dietary variability over the period recorded by the hair.

The pattern was consistent with a person moving between environments with different food resources — a shift that might reflect the transition from a coastal or coastal-influenced environment to a more interior one, as would be expected if he was traveling from the coast toward the interior through the mountains.

This interpretation is consistent with the other lines of evidence — the coastal hat, the marine dietary signature in long-term tissues, the salmon in the stomach — but it is important to note that it is an interpretation, not a direct record.

The isotopes record the chemistry of what was eaten; the inference that dietary change reflects geographic change, rather than seasonal change in the foods available in a single location, involves assumptions that the evidence supports but does not prove with certainty.