This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The first definitive evidence of when post-Roman lead production began in one of Europe's largest medieval lead-producing regions, the Derbyshire Peak District in central England, has been uncovered by archaeologists after centuries of mining had erased much of the archaeological evidence. The work has been published in Antiquity.
With Roman and medieval lead waste repeatedly re-smelted during the 16th to 19th centuries, many of the industrial traces archaeologists would normally rely on had disappeared. The research team, led by the University of Nottingham in collaboration with the British Geological Survey, the University of Sheffield, York Archaeology and Castleton Historical Society, therefore turned to an unexpected archive—the teeth of the people who lived in the Peak District. By analyzing chemical signatures preserved in tooth enamel, they were able to reveal when mining and smelting restarted after the end of Roman Britain, during the mid-seventh century, and uncover how this major industry shaped the lives of local communities.
Tooth enamel forms during childhood and does not remodel throughout life, meaning it preserves a permanent record of the lead absorbed during childhood. By measuring lead concentrations locked within enamel, the researchers reconstructed childhood exposure to pollution between about 650 and 1500. Lead author Christopher Loveluck, professor of medieval European archaeology at the University of Nottingham's Department of Classics and Archaeology, said, "The team is delighted to have finally confirmed definitively the date by which the early medieval lead industry was established in the Peak District, by the mid-seventh century A.D., through evidence provided by the people themselves, providing the foundations of western Europe's largest lead-producing region between the late 12th and 16th centuries." The study compared the lead levels of three Peak District cemeteries with populations from across Britain, from the Neolithic period through to the Industrial Revolution, showing that even in the seventh century the lead levels in children among the Derbyshire mining communities were the same as or greater than those from industrialized cities from about 1750–1850.
The research is the first to analyze lead contamination in people who mined and smelted lead in western Europe's largest medieval lead-producing region. Lead is a toxic metal that can damage the nervous, renal and reproductive systems. Medieval mining and smelting created multiple routes of exposure through contaminated dust, fumes and materials.
By examining lead preserved in tooth enamel, the researchers were able to investigate how exposure varied between individuals and across communities. The findings provide the first absolute evidence that post-Roman lead production in the Derbyshire Peak District was established by the middle of the seventh century A.D., and show that by the mid-eighth century, large-scale production had contaminated the wider environment around mining centers such as Castleton, in the Peak District. However, exposure was not experienced equally across society.
Individuals buried with high-status grave goods, including weapons, generally had much lower lead concentrations than those from less richly furnished burials. This suggests that elites may have controlled or benefited from lead production, while lower-status households were more directly involved in processing ore and smelting, exposing children within those communities to much higher levels of pollution. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly.
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