Excavation of a beaker cist burial with meadowsweet at Home Farm, Udny Green, Aberdeenshire

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of the rescue excavation of a short cist burial of a young male.
Pollen and other analyses of residues in and immediately below the accompanying beaker suggest
that it had contained a drink, possibly milk, flavoured with meadowsweet and possibly containing
honey. Pollen analysis also revealed that the cist had been constructed within an open, farmed
landscape, probably not far from a settlement; wheat and perhaps barley had probably been grown
very near the cist. A radiocarbon date of 3795 ± 28 BP (2340–2130 cal BC) has been obtained from
the skeleton. Isotopic analysis of the bones, undertaken as part of the Marischal Museum’s current
Beakers and Bodies Project, has revealed that the young man’s diet was, like that of other recently
analysed British Early Bronze Age skeletons, terrestrial.