The male instead had an isotopic signature more typical of the Southern Uplands, Southern Highlands or Loch Lomond area so it is likely he came to Cramond from an inland area."The study's findings, published in the Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences journal, provide insights into early medieval population mobility in Scotland. Cramond was one of the key political centres in this period when the country was divided between the Scotti in Dál Riata in the west, the Picts in northern Scotland and the Britons in the south. Dr Orsolya Czére, post-doctoral researcher and lead author of the study, added:“It is often assumed that travel in this period would have been limited without roads like we have today and given the political divides of the time. The analysis of the burials from Cramond, along with other early medieval burial sites in Scotland, are revealing that it was not unusual to be buried far from where you had originally grown up.... This is an important step in unravelling how these different populations of early medieval Scotland and Britain interacted.”
