Bronze Age Burial in Britain: Forwarded without Conviction

The news from England:

Archaeologists conducting a study of Bronze Age residents found three distinct groups in the burial pits at Cliffs End Farm, near Pegwell Bay, Kent. Using analysis of oxygen and strontium isotopes in tooth enamel the researchers found while one group had been born locally, the other two groups came from much further afield. A total of 25 people, aged between 6 and 55 at the time of their death, were found in the pits, according to The Times. The isotopes, which are derived from drinking water, can be used to identify where the individual was living at the time their tooth enamel formed.

The researchers found a group of nine spent their lives in the local area, while eight were believed to have been born in what is now southern Norway or Sweden. Another five came from the western Mediterranean, possibly Spain or even North Africa. Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, which will publish the research today, said: 'This is the first burial site of its type that we’ve found and it reveals that Britain was always part of a bigger landscape that includes most of Europe.'

Well, maybe. I have no particular criticism to make of this isotope business, but I am skeptical. It just seems too simple to me. In my experience every attempt to derive clear, simple patterns from the past via laboratory tests eventually dissolves into chaos. Consider radiocarbon dating, a truly amazing technology that almost works about half the time; why it doesn't work the rest of the time is really hard to explain, but people have taken multiple samples from the same tree branch and gotten dates hundreds of years apart. I once ran dates on three charcoal samples from the same pit and got dates of 200, 1500 and 4000 years ago. Or protein residue analysis, which doesn't work at all. People have demonstrated this by taking new, clean stone tools, burying them in the ground, digging them up a year later and sending them to labs where they test positive for alpaca blood. Nobody knows why. So far as we understand it, the technology ought to work. But it doesn't.

I am waiting for something similar to happen with isotopic analysis of tooth enamel. I don't know what it will be, but I just don't accept that this method will always tell us, from an ancient skeleton, where somebody grew up. I don't think we're that lucky.