Mandy Jay is a postdoctoral researcher employed on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) out of the University of Durham (UK). Her PhD, from the University of Bradford, was recently completed and related to the carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of archaeological bone collagen for the purpose of dietary reconstruction. She is particularly interested in the levels of variation in such isotopic values which have been caused by environmental background, thus affecting the interpretation of data from Homo sp. in all time periods. Such variation can be caused by both geographical differences and temporal changes in local environment and is often best studied empirically by looking at archaeological animal bone. She is also interested in the ways in which the carbon and nitrogen data can be combined with other isotopic data (sulphur from collagen, oxygen and strontium from tooth enamel) to investigate mobility patterns.