Food, environment and identity are intrinsically linked. Food is a reflection of the environment, and when it is transformed into cuisine it also carries cultural memory and meaning within it. Therefore, isotopic signatures from biological tissues are an imprint of foodways and the environment. I have utilised multi-isotope (13C, 15N, 18O and 87/86Sr) and multi-tissue (bone, dentine and enamel) analyses to better understand the lifeways of people in Early Medieval England within a European context. The first millennium AD is a time of great change both in terms of social systems but also environmentally. Biomolecular archaeology is therefore uniquely placed to look at the interplay between environment and human agency. This paper looks at isotopic variability and cultural dynamism within Early Medieval communities to better characterise and disentangle human-environment interactions across the period.  

Isotopic signatures for both diet and mobility will be explored. I demonstrate the impact of climate change (the Late Antique Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period) as well as “brewing and stewing” on human 18O values. The significant diachronic changes in diet and mobility patterns found reflect the highly dynamic and far from insular position of England within Europe in the first millennium AD. My analyses support a model of continual and relatively large-scale migration from the continent Europe across the period, and changes to foodways which reflect not just shifts in economics and agricultural practice but changing worldviews (e.g. the impacts of Christianisation). Isotopic data when combined with archaeo-historical evidence show that identity construction in Early Medieval communities was highly complex, and there is no clear link between isotopic patterns, genetics and grave goods usually seen as “ethnic” signifiers. These were multi-origin communities in continual contact through long-distance networks who were highly adaptable in response to socio-environmental changes we see throughout the first millennium AD.