ABSTRACT
In July 1834 William Beswick, the local landowner, and a group of friends opened a barrow at Gristhorpe, just north of Filey, North Yorkshire. The Gristhorpe log-coffin burial is one of 75 recorded in Britain that range in date from the twenty-third to seventeenth centuries cal bc. Gristhorpe Man was a physically active male who had attained the prime of life, being at least 36 to 45 years and probably much older at the time of his death. Gristhorpe Man’s origins and diet were investigated using a combination of stable isotope measurements. Strontium, lead, and phosphate oxygen isotope ratios from the mandibular second molar tooth enamel, which mineralizes between the ages of two-and-a-half and eight, are all consistent with origins on the Jurassic silicate rocks of the Scarborough region but not Jurassic limestones or the Cretaceous chalk of the Wolds.
