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Stable isotope analysis has provided crucial new insights into dietary change at the Neolithic transition in north-west Europe, indicating an unexpectedly sudden and radical shift from marine to terrestrial resources in coastal and island locations. Investigations of early Neolithic skeletal material from Sumburgh on Shetland, at the far-flung margins of the Neolithic world, suggest that this general pattern may mask significant subtle detail. Analysis of juvenile dentine reveals the consumption of marine foods on an occasional basis. This suggests that marine foods may have been consumed as a crucial supplementary resource in times of famine, when the newly introduced cereal crops failed to cope with the demanding climate of Shetland. This isotopic evidence is consistent with the presence of marine food debris in contemporary middens. The occasional and contingent nature of marine food consumption underlines how, even on Shetland, the shift from marine to terrestrial diet was a key element in the Neolithic transition

The presence of this food vessel that once contained milk within a burial of high status is suggestive of the importance placed on these secondary products. It is perhaps more remarkable that this information was retrieved not only from material of such antiquity, but also from an excavation that occurred nearly 200 years ago.

Bradford Scholars -how to deposit your paper Overview Copyright check• Check if your publisher allows submission to a repository.• Use the Sherpa RoMEO database if you are not sure about your publisher's position or email openaccess@bradford.ac.uk.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Rylstone coffin and textile were radiocarbon dated to confirm that the burial was Early Bronze Age and not an Early Medieval coffin inserted into an earlier funerary monument.Unexpectedly, the dates were neither Early Bronze Age nor Early Medieval but c. 800 BC, the cusp of the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition in Britain. The burial at Rylstone is, therefore, one of only two sites in Britain, and is unparalleled elsewhere in north-western Europe at a time when disposal of the dead was primarily through dispersed cremated or unburnt disarticulated remains.

archaeological investigations were undertaken on middens exposed by coastal erosion at West Voe in the south of Mainland Shetland, UK. This work established that the site dated from c. 4000 cal BC to c. 3250 cal BC and was of major importance for two reasons: (1) as the first of Mesolithic date to be found on Shetland; (2) as the first site to be found in the Northern Isles that spanned the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. This paper describes investigations into the origin of sands deposited around 3500 cal BC and their potential effect on human settlement. The sands in question lie between two midden deposits, the lower of which accumulated over the period 4000-3500 cal BC and the upper 3500-3250 cal BC. The sands, therefore, dated to the period shortly after the adoption of agriculture on the archipelago, represented in the lower midden by the appearance of domesticated species and ceramics at around 3700-3600 cal BC, and represented a disruption in human occupation at a critical point in the development of a changing use of the landscape.Preliminary investigations in 2002 on a shell midden exposed by coastal erosion at West Voe, in the south of Mainland Shetland (see Fig. 1; Melton & Nicholson 2004), established that the site consisted of two middens, the lower of which appeared to be predominantly composed of oysters and sealed a thin black sandy Holocene layer, typically 0.10 m thick, that overlay glacial till. This lower midden was sealed by c. 0.4 m of sand, the subject of this paper. Above the sand was a second, upper, midden that consisted entirely of cockles. This midden butted a substantial wall, and was sealed by a sequence of dune sands in excess of 6 m thickness. A single radiocarbon date was obtained from each of the middens and these indicated that the lower midden dated from the late fifth millennium BC and the upper from the second quarter of the fourth millennium BC, and thus that the midden sequence spanned the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.

In 1834 in a tumulus at Gristhorpe, North Yorkshire, UK, an intact coffin fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of an oak tree was found to contain a well-preserved skeleton stained black from the oak tannins, wrapped in an animal skin and buried with a range of grave artefacts, including a bronze dagger, flints and a bark vessel. The remains were deposited in the Rotunda Museum at Scarborough, where closure due to refurbishment in 2005-2008 provided an opportunity for the scientific investigation of the skeletal remains and artefacts using a wide range of techniques. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating has established the age of the skeleton as 2140-1940 BC at 95% confidence, in the Early Bronze Age. As part of this project, Raman spectra of several mysterious small spherical objects discovered in the coffin underneath the skeleton and initially believed to be 'mistletoe berries' associated with ancient burial customs have been recorded non-destructively. The interpretation of the Raman spectral data, microscopic analysis and comparison with modern specimens has led to the conclusion that the small spheres are phosphatic urinary stones, which reflect the archaeological dietary evidence and stable isotope analysis of bone collagen of Gristhorpe Man.

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