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

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 suggestthat it had contained a drink, possibly milk, flavoured with meadowsweet and possibly containinghoney. Pollen analysis also revealed that the cist had been constructed within an open, farmedlandscape, probably not far from a settlement; wheat and perhaps barley had probably been grownvery near the cist. A radiocarbon date of 3795 ± 28 BP (2340–2130 cal BC) has been obtained fromthe skeleton. Isotopic analysis of the bones, undertaken as part of the Marischal Museum’s currentBeakers and Bodies Project, has revealed that the young man’s diet was, like that of other recentlyanalysed British Early Bronze Age skeletons, terrestrial.