Grace Coon
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Iride Tomazic
Research Mentor School/College/Department: University of Michigan Museum of Archaeological Anthropology / LSA
Program:
Authors: Grace Coon, Pranavan Varatharajah, Iride Tomazic
Session: Session 3: 11:00 am – 11: 50 am
Poster: 12
Abstract
This study is a part of a dissertation project called “Dangerous Technologies,” which examines the impacts of the intensification of metallurgy on people, animals, and the environment from 4500 to 1500 BC in the Southern Carpathian Basin. Contamination and pollution are readily examined in numerous sciences such as public health, ecology, and geology; however, such studies are rarely examined in archeology. This portion of “Dangerous Technologies” focuses on the laboratory preparation of animal tooth enamel and soil samples in order to document evidence of possible environmental contamination, associated with an increase in metallurgical production around 2000 BC. Samples in this study came from cores across six different archeological sites. Using a common method in ecological studies, samples were taken through a chemical leaching procedure to determine the levels of heavy metal elements such as lead, cadmium and arsenic in archeological deposits. Animal teeth were also analyzed from a similar archeological context. Tooth enamel samples from sheep/goats, red deer, and domestic pigs were taken through a published cleaning protocol used in public health, dentistry, and trace element studies used in the geosciences, before undergoing a clean lab chemical digestion procedure. The chemically digested tooth enamel samples and soil extracts will be examined with Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS) at the University of Michigan as part of the “Dangerous Technologies” dissertation project. Previous studies have shown evidence of heavy metal contamination in the samples, and this study scales up the existing data.
