Abstract The Sr isotope ratios and Sr concentration in tooth enamel from a rural tenth-twelfth century Anglo-Saxon population living on a Jurassic clay-carbonate terrain in eastern England gives the following mean values: 87 Sr/ 86 Sr=0.7098±0.0018 (2σ, n =22) and Sr concentrations = 74±62 p.p.m. (2σ). The isotope data are taken to be representative of Anglo-Saxon biosphere values in the area of study. The Sr isotope composition of soil leachates, plant material, riverwaters and animal tooth enamel associated with the burial site were all analysed to see which gave the best approximation to these local Anglo-Saxon values, the aim being to define the best method of predicting the local Sr signature of areas for archaeological purposes. The Sr isotope composition of acetic acid soil leachates were dominated by the carbonate soil component and gave 0.7085±0.0020 water leachates gave 0.7090±0.0014 and plant material gave 0.7092±0.0018 (all at 2σ, n =12). All of these materials were less radiogenic that those of the Anglo-Saxon population. Riverwater gave the same result as the plants at 0.7092±0.0012 (2σ, n =3). The Anglo-Saxon animal tooth enamel gave the best match with a value of 0.7099±0.0017 (2σ, n =13). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests show that there is a high probability (>70% probability, 2SD) that the animals and the humans sampled were from the same population with respect to Sr isotope composition. Thus animal tooth enamel proved to be the best proxy, in this study, for the local human population.

Abstract Bate (1978, p. 254) commented of the Great Estuarine Group succession from the Inner Hebrides, Scotland (Fig. 1 ) that it ‘is so imperfectly known with respect to its ostracod fauna that it is one area in urgent need of investigation’. This was rectified by Wakefield (1991, 1994) in which the largest freshwater and brackish water ostracod fauna from the British Bathonian was described, particularly with respect to the number of darwinulid and lim-nocytherid species. However, the similarity with freshwater and brackish water ostracod assemblages recorded in the English Midlands, although generically high, was specifically low. Studies recording freshwater and brackish water ostracods from the English Midlands, and therefore of com-parative interest, are those of Bate (1965, 1967) , Ware (1978) , Stephens (1980) , Ware & Whatley (1980) , Ware & Windle (1981) , Jacovides (1982) , Timberlake (1982), Barrington (1986) , and Stride (1994) . Figure 2 illustrates the stratigraphical coverage of these studies and their overlap with the Great Estuarine Group succession. The development of such brackish water ostracod faunas during the Bathonian was discussed in Whatley (1990). Lithostratigraphical correlation of Bathonian strata from the English Midlands highlighting successions from which freshwater and brackish-water ostracods have been analysed. The lithostratigraphy of the Great Estuarine Group, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, is also shown to enable an approximate correlation with the English successions. English stratigraphy after Bradshaw (1978) , Torrens (1980b) , Boneham & Wyatt (1993) ,