Social dynamics of toxic metal industry in medieval Europe: Peak District lead production, AD 600–1500 | Antiquity | Cambridge Core

Introduction The production of key metals, such as silver and lead, has long been studied by historians of the European Middle Ages (c. AD 400–1500) but textual sources on the origins of these industries are partial and fragmented, providing only hints as to when specialist production may have begun. Over the past two decades, high-resolution palaeoenvironmental studies from lake-, peat- and ice-cores have identified when lead aerosol pollution began to contaminate the environment of northern, western and Mediterranean Europe yet most of these environmental records are derived from areas far from medieval lead- and silver-producing centres (Loveluck et al. Reference Loveluck2020). Studies of the impact of pollution in the regions that housed the largest of these medieval metal industries are extremely rare (e.g. Kempter & Frenzel Reference Kempter and Frenzel2000), and analyses of the impact of lead pollution on the communities that mined and smelted the metal are all but absent. Lead (Pb) is a toxic metal that can affect the nervous, renal and reproductive systems when ingested (Farmer et al. Reference Farmer2024). Those working with lead during the medieval period would have been exposed to harm at different stages of the mining and smelting processes; for example, through inhalation/ingestion of gases or dust. Once in the body, lead is preferentially deposited in the hard tissues—bone, dentine and enamel. Thus, analysis of lead concentrations (in parts per million (ppm)) in tooth enamel may provide a means to differentiate between individuals who were actively involved with lead mining and processing and those exposed to background levels of pollution from the broader landscape. This article presents the first analysis of levels of lead contamination among communities living in one of western Europe’s largest lead-producing regions during the Middle Ages: the Derbyshire Peak District, at the southernmost extent of the Pennine hills in central England. It provides the first absolute dates for post-Roman lead production in the region, from the mid-seventh century; with large-scale production contaminating the local environment around certain centres, such as Castleton, by the mid-eighth century (Figure 1). The results further shed light on the age and gender dynamics of seventh- to fifteenth-century lead production, reflecting childhood exposure (between the ages of four and 12 years) and suggesting an association between high lead burden and premature death, especially among women. Comparison with Neolithic to Industrial Revolution populations provides a benchmark of expected lead levels among silver-lead-producer communities in medieval Europe and other periods. Figure 1.Locations of places discussed in the text: a) Britain and north-west Europe; b) detail of places in the English East Midlands (figure by A. Bloxam & C.P. Loveluck). Peak District lead production to AD 1500 Despite evidence for copper mining at Ecton Hill in the Peak District from c. 1880–1640 BC (Timberlake Reference Timberlake2017: 714), the first evidence for intentional lead extraction, indicated by a lead casting-model for a socketed axe from Mam Tor (Guilbert Reference Guilbert1996) and a lead object from Gardom’s Edge (Barnatt & Smith Reference Barnatt and Smith2004: 49), dates from a millennium later. Following Roman annexation of the Peak, lead ingots indicate that large-scale production ensued at c. AD 80–200 (Branigan Reference Branigan, Hodges and Smith1991: 60), under a franchise known as the sociorum Lutud(arensium) (Dool & Hughes Reference Dool and Hughes1976: 16). Lead production continued among rural communities through the third and fourth centuries, reflected at Carsington, Bradwell, Rainster Rocks and Chee Tor (Branigan Reference Branigan, Hodges and Smith1991: 60). Southern Pennines lead, probably from the Peak District, was still arriving in middle Rhine centres such as Cologne and Trier in AD 300–400, formed into coffins and other artefacts (Durali-Mueller et al. Reference Durali-Mueller2007: 1566), after which it has been assumed that production largely collapsed, serving only sporadic local needs. The sudden wealth of mid-seventh-century cemeteries in the Peak District might reflect renewed lead production to resource Christian church building (Loveluck Reference Loveluck, Bintliff and Hamerow1995: 90; Figure 2). Smelting of fresh metal has previously been dated only to sometime between c. AD 760 and 860, based on lead isotope analysis of weights from Birka, Sweden (Ambrosiani Reference Ambrosiani2013; Kershaw & Merkel Reference Kershaw and Merkel2023: 275). However, a charter summary attributed to AD 835 also records a nobleman, Humberht, paying rent for an estate in Wirksworth (Low/White Peak; see Figure 1b) to the monastery at Repton (Derbyshire) in the medium of lead. He was obliged to organise transport of the lead to Canterbury, presumably via the River Humber and the North Sea coast (Kelly & Brooks Reference Kelly and Brooks2013: 636–38). This route is mirrored in lead objects and working debris found at eighth-to-ninth-century settlements from Flixborough, Beverley, Riby and Fishtoft (Loveluck Reference Loveluck2007: 102–103; Taylor Reference Taylor and Cope-Faulkner2012: 70–72; Figure 1). Pewter fittings on the Gokstad ship, Norway (Figure 1a), alloyed using metal from the Peak District/Pennines and Melle (Deux-Sèvres), France, also suggest continued production or recycling of lead from the Peak District into the tenth century (Pedersen et al. Reference Pedersen2016: 158–59). Radiocarbon dating of the individuals included in our study provides the first absolute dates for lead production in these centuries through in-vivo contamination concentrations in the region. Figure 2.Wigber Low cemetery, c. AD 625–685: a) & b) plan and photograph of burial 4 (WIG 03) with sword (copyright University of Sheffield; plan redrawn from Collis Reference Collis1983 by A. Bloxam); c) crystal ball amulet (diameter 36mm), burial 9 (WIG 06); d) gold and beaver-tooth pendant (length 37mm) found close to burial 9 (copyright Sheffield Museums Trust). By the mid-eleventh century, the Domesday survey (Db) (undertaken to record the use and taxable value of land across Norman England) suggests that large-scale lead production occurred in the Peak District during the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066). Mines/smelting centres (plu(m)baria) were recorded at royal manors in the Low Peak, at Matlock (one mine), Wirksworth (three mines), Bakewell (one mine) and Ashford (one mine) (Db (Domesday Book), F. (Folio) 272b–d; Morgan Reference Morgan1978). The manors of Ashford, Bakewell and Hope each owed annually five ‘cart-loads’ of lead (with one cart-load equalling approximately 2100lbs) in Geld-tax in 1066, with 50 sheets of lead per cart-load (Db, F. 272d-273a; Morgan Reference Morgan1978). In 1086, the manors of Darley, Matlock, Wirksworth, Ashbourne and Parwich owed annually 40 pounds in ‘pure silver’ (argenti puri) in Geld, the only use of this specific term in Domesday Book (Db, F. 272c; Morgan Reference Morgan1978), possibly reflecting some extraction of the small amounts of silver in galena-lead ore. These silver payments were made at the start of the European ‘silver shortage’ of c. 1050–1150 (Spufford Reference Spufford1988: 95–99). However, use of British silver is difficult to identify in a recent, small-scale lead-isotope analysis of twelfth-century British coinage (Savage et al. Reference Savage2024). A castle was constructed by William Peverel (Peveril Castle) in the High Peak before 1086, at the berewick (linked secondary settlement) of the royal estate centre at Hope, called Pechesers, likely named after a lead mine adjacent to the castle (Db, F. 276b; Morgan Reference Morgan1978; Figure 1b). The settlement around the mine and castle later became known as Castleton and was the administrative centre and key focus of lead mining in the medieval High Peak region (Loveluck et al. Reference Loveluck2020: OSM 5: 39). Excavations from 2009–2026 (currently unpublished) led jointly by the University of Sheffield and Castleton Historical Society have uncovered unfurnished graves within Castleton at two locations: Joule Yard, dating between the seventh and eleventh centuries AD; and Spital Field, on the eastern outskirts of the village associated with a medieval hospital building, dating from the twelfth–late fifteenth centuries AD (Figure 3). Individuals from these Castleton cemeteries provide the principal Peak District population sample in this study. Figure 3.The Castleton cemeteries: a) Joule Yard; b) Spital Field (figure by C. Merrony & A. Darlington). The date range of the cemetery populations also covers a period when more comprehensive documentary evidence for the scale of Peak District lead production is available. For example, the Pipe Rolls (recording taxation owed and paid to the royal Treasury) show that Peak District lead production reached its medieval zenith from c. 1180–1215 (Loveluck et al. Reference Loveluck2020: 476, OSM5: 37–52). A decline in production followed, with renewed cycles of ‘boom and bust’ from the late thirteenth–fifteenth centuries (Blanchard Reference Blanchard2005: 1400). An ice-core drilled from the north-west-facing slope at Colle Gnifetti (Swiss-Italian Alps) reveals lead-pollution trends identical to Peak District production cycles, with high points from c. 1180–1215 and decline in the mid-thirteenth century (More et al. Reference More2017: 213; Loveluck et al. Reference Loveluck2020: 476). Here, we investigate levels of lead pollution within a Peak District population against these historical production and environmental pollution records. Methodological approach This study has the following objectives: 1) to provide radiocarbon dates for the establishment and changing scales of lead production in the medieval Peak District; 2) to use lead contaminant concentrations in the teeth of a