Britain

This chapter includes analyses of skeletal samples from Great Britain, although virtually all of the specimens originate from within present-day England only. In addition to the skeletal samples, stature and body mass data for a number of living British anthropometric samples were gleaned from the literature, to serve as very recent comparisons. In most temporal periods and for most cross-sectional properties, British samples do not depart significantly from non-British European samples. The most apparent temporal trend in bone strength among the British samples is a decline in size-standardized bending strength of the tibia after the Neolithic. Among British samples, body size increases from the early Neolithic to the Eneolithic/early Bronze Age, and then declines through the Early Modern period. These trends may track changes in nutrition and living conditions, which may have improved with the Secondary Products Revolution in the late Neolithic and then gradually deteriorated.