The study of lead impact and usage in England during the Medieval period

该项目将侧重于中世纪时期铅使用对人类健康的影响。铅（Pb）是一种剧毒金属，但至少从古典时期开始就被广泛用于家居用品、手工艺品和药品中。这种跨学科分析将把物质文化、文本和人类遗骸联系起来，以确定铅的潜在来源和对不同区域人口和社会阶层的影响。物质文化的影响将通过广泛的文献检索来评估日常家居用品中铅的存在以及铅是如何被摄入的，例如，从釉料、管道、锡镴和其他含铅物品中。文本证据，如医药配方，诗歌和个人记录也将纳入本研究。在确定铅污染源之后，我将检查铅中毒的骨骼证据。在这一领域发表的工作很少，而且大多数早于新方法的发展（例如Waldron， 1973,1979,1983）。最近的研究着眼于罗马时期（例如Montgomery etal ., 2010），并将重点放在历史和牙齿化学上，而不是骨骼指标上。本文将独特地结合物质文化和骨骼数据方面来评估中世纪铅对健康的影响。骨骼残骸将从城镇和农村地区的墓地中寻找，包括一个主要的采矿区Peak District，以便将来源地点与该地区以外的农村和城市含铅商品消费点进行比较。

This project will focus on the understudied human health impact of lead use in the Medieval period. Lead (Pb) is a highly toxic metal, yet was widely used in household goods, artefacts and medicines from at least the Classical period onwards. This interdisciplinary analysis will link material culture, texts and human remains to determine the potential sources and impacts of lead on different regional populations and strata of society.Impact via material culture will be assessed through an extensive literature search of the presence of lead in everyday household objects and how it may have been ingested, e.g. from glazes, piping, pewter, and other lead-based objects. Textual evidence such as medical recipes, poems and personal records will also be incorporated into this study. Following the identification of sources of lead pollution, I will then examine skeletal evidence of lead poisoning. Very little work has been published in this area, and most predates the development of new methodologies (e.g. Waldron, 1973, 1979, 1983). More recent work has looked at the Roman period (e.g. Montgomery et al., 2010) and has focussed on history and tooth chemistry rather than skeletal indicators. This thesis will uniquelycombine aspects of material culture and skeletal data to assess the impact of lead on health in the Medieval period. Skeletal remains will be sourced from cemeteries in towns and rural areas, including the Peak District - a key mining region - to compare a source locality with rural and urban consumptionpoints of goods containing lead beyond it.