ODENSE, DENMARK—Scientists from the University of Southern Denmark analyzed the levels of lead and mercury in more than 200 skeletons from medieval cemeteries in Denmark and Germany. They found that wealthier people, who usually lived in towns, had higher levels of heavy metals in their bodies. Mercury was used to prepare the color cinnabar, for gilding, and was used as medicine for the treatment syphilis and leprosy, a common ailment. As for lead exposure, the wealthy ate from plates that had been glazed with lead oxide. Salty and acidic foods kept in these glazed pots dissolved the glaze and the lead leaked into the food. Poorer people, often living in the country, were still exposed to lead, but they usually used unglazed pottery. “In the Middle Ages you could almost not avoid ingesting lead, if you were wealthy or living in an urban environment. But what is perhaps more severe, is the fact that exposure to lead leads to lower intelligence of children,” Kaare Lund Rasmussen said in a press release. Exposure to townspeople also came from lead coins, stained-glass windows, and lead tiles on the roofs, since rainwater was often collected for drinking. To read more about medieval bioarchaeology, go to “Vengance on the Vikings.”
Unhealthy Levels of Lead Found in Medieval Skeletons
News October 20, 2015
Recommended Articles
Letter from Germany September/October 2022
Berlin’s Medieval Origins
In the midst of modern construction, archaeologists search for evidence of the city’s earliest days
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2021
Otto’s Church
Artifacts May/June 2024
Medieval Iron Gauntlet
-
Features September/October 2015
New York’s Original Seaport
Traces of the city’s earliest beginnings as an economic and trading powerhouse lie just beneath the streets of South Street Seaport
(Library of Congress) -
Features September/October 2015
Cultural Revival
Excavations near a Yup’ik village in Alaska are helping its people reconnect with the epic stories and practices of their ancestors
(Courtesy Charlotta Hillerdal, University of Aberdeen) -
Letter from England September/October 2015
Writing on the Church Wall
Graffiti from the Middle Ages provides insight into personal expressions of faith in medieval England
-
Artifacts September/October 2015
Corner Beam Cover
(Courtesy Chinese Cultural Relics)