Its Relationship to Residence Location and Social Position

University of Southern Denmark Copper exposure in medieval and post-medieval Denmark and northern Germany: its relationship to residence location and social position Rasmussen, Kaare Lund; Milner, George R.; Delbey, Thomas; Skytte, Lilian; Sovso, Morten; Callesen, Frederik; Boldsen, Jesper Lier Published in: Heritage Science DOI: 10.1186/s40494-020-00365-4 Publication date: 2020 Document version: Final published version Document license: CC BY Citation for pulished version (APA): Rasmussen, K. L., Milner, G. R., Delbey, T., Skytte, L., Sovso, M., Callesen, F., & Boldsen, J. L. (2020). Copper exposure in medieval and post-medieval Denmark and northern Germany: its relationship to residence location and social position. Heritage Science, 8(1), [18]. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-020-00365-4 Go to publication entry in University of Southern Denmark's Research Portal Terms of use This work is brought to you by the University of Southern Denmark. Unless otherwise specified it has been shared according to the terms for self-archiving. If no other license is stated, these terms apply: • You may download this work for personal use only. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying this open access version If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details and we will investigate your claim. Please direct all enquiries to [email protected] Download date: 07. Oct. 2021 Rasmussen et al. Herit Sci (2020) 8:18 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-020-00365-4 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Copper exposure in medieval and post‑medieval Denmark and northern Germany: its relationship to residence location and social position Kaare Lund Rasmussen1* , George R. Milner2, Thomas Delbey1, Lilian Skytte1, Morten Søvsø3, Frederik Callesen4 and Jesper Lier Boldsen5 Abstract For medieval and post-medieval Denmark and northern Germany, trace elements can potentially contribute to our understanding of diet, migration, social status, exposure to urban settings, and disease treatment. Copper, of particular interest as a marker of access to everyday metal items, can be used to clarify socioeconomic distinctions between and within communities. Postmortem alteration of bone (diagenesis), however, must be ruled out before the elements can be used to characterize life in the past. Femoral cortical bone samples of ca. 40 mg were thoroughly decontaminated, and the concentrations of Al, Ca, Mn, Fe, Cu, As, Sr, Ba, and Pb were measured using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The concentrations of these elements were quantifed in bone samples from 553 skeletons from 9 rural and urban cemeteries, and 34 soil samples obtained near three burials. Copper, the primary element of interest in this work, is generally absent from the femoral cortical bone of rural people, although it occurs in high concentrations in the skeletons of the inhabitants of towns. The Cu in medieval to post-medieval bones likely originated from everyday objects, notably kitchen utensils. A rural to urban distinction in Cu concentrations, found repeatedly at two sites, likely resulted from diferential access to much-desired, although still utilitarian, household items. An uneven distribution of metal objects used in domestic contexts, demonstrated through bone chemistry, was greater between rural and urban communities than it was within urban centres, at least among the socioeconomic positions sampled in this study. Keywords: Bone chemistry, Copper, Lead, Medieval northern Europe, Cooking utensils Introduction of bone, although elemental concentrations have also For several decades it has been recognized that the played a part in this research. Among the trace elements chemical composition of human skeletal remains can in bone, Cu can potentially yield insights into medieval contribute much to an understanding of past societies, and early modern European social and economic systems especially with regard to dietary composition, migration, through exposure to items, notably metal household social position, and medical practices [1–16]. Much of utensils, that had uneven temporal, geographical, and this work has focused on the stable isotopic composition social distributions. However, bone Cu concentrations have rarely been used for that purpose. Te value of Cu *Correspondence: [email protected] for furthering understandings of life in the past is dem- 1 Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Cultural Heritage onstrated here through an examination of Cu concentra- and Archaeometric Research Team (CHART), University of Southern tions in 553 skeletons from nine centuries-old cemeteries Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M, Denmark Full list of author information is available at the end of the article from Denmark and northern Germany. © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdo- main/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Rasmussen et al. Herit Sci (2020) 8:18 Page 2 of 22 During the medieval to early modern period, Cu expo- Because items fashioned from Cu are so poorly repre- sure, hence its concentration in the skeleton, usually sented in habitation deposits relative to other debris, and would have been related to an individual’s access to eve- the interpretation of excavated material is complicated ryday metal objects. Items such as kitchen utensils made by diferent depositional histories and dissimilar sampled from Cu or its alloys were irregularly distributed among contexts, it is difcult to evaluate the social and economic and within European communities because access to signifcance of an irregular distribution of metal kitchen trade networks and markets was uneven, and distinc- utensils among archaeological sites. tions in social status had a great infuence on the kinds of Because of these problems with historical and archaeo- goods people could aford. In addition to socioeconomic logical information, human bones are more than just an reasons for diferential Cu exposure, the element is a additional source of evidence about Cu exposure. Bones potential marker of the relatively few people who were are, in fact, potentially the most direct means of assessing directly involved in mining or metal working. Finally, temporal, geographical, and social variation in access to elemental concentrations in archaeological bone, includ- items fashioned from Cu and its alloys. Tat is because ing Cu [17–23], can possibly be afected by diagenesis. In Cu concentrations in bone are a means of quantitatively short, Cu in excavated bones might originate from the measuring an individual’s exposure to that element, as food and drink consumed, environmental exposure, or long as diagenesis does not muddy the picture. alterations in composition long after a skeleton was bur- Although this study focuses on Cu, the concentrations ied. Because the last confounds interpretations of archae- of several other elements are also reported. Lead has pre- ological skeletons, it is fortunate that Cu concentrations viously been shown to be an indicator of exposure attrib- in bones from medieval to early modern Danish cemeter- utable to where people lived and their position within ies are largely free of diagenetic efects as long as suitable society [10, 39, 40], and Sr and Ba provide information precautions are taken when sampling thick cortical bone about residence location and dietary intake [4, 10, 11, 14, [24]. 41–45]. Calcium permits assessments of sample integ- Denmark and adjacent portions of Germany are par- rity, and Mn, Fe, Al, and As are useful in the evaluation of ticularly well-suited for a study of Cu and what it can diagenesis as it pertains to Cu. Together these elements indicate about medieval and early modern societies. Tat provide a level of detail about medieval and early mod- is because objects fashioned from Cu and its alloys, espe- ern life in northern Europe that cannot be obtained from cially bronze, were widely, but variably, used by diferent other historical or archaeological sources. segments of the northern European population [25–38]. In general, the most important sources of exposure were Copper in human skeletons metal kitchen utensils that were highly valued substitutes A necessary element for their ceramic or wooden counterparts. When availa- Copper, an essential trace element, has long been ble, metal cooking utensils possessed several clear advan- regarded as having important, but as yet incompletely tages for the households fortunate enough to have them: understood,

Load more