>Not necessarily. The fact that one can find elevated quantities of heavy
>metals in bones from archaeological sites doesn't necessaily mean that these
>were the quantities in bone at the time of death.
David,
Interesting.
The implications in the abstract are that the high levels of heavy metals
were in certain individuals - presumably for burials within the study period
the contamination from ground waters can be filtered out in the final analysis.
This reinforces the view that most, if not all, archaeological evidence has
to be treated as part of a much large picture, not necessarily taken at face
value; which is equally true of the documentary evidence for later (as the
archaeologists call them - 'text aided') periods.
Peter
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Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen,
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University of Exeter - School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
(Centre for South Western Historical Studies)
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