A Roman provincial city and its contamination legacy from artisanal and daily-life activities
Abstract
Roman metal use and related extraction activities resulted in heavy metal pollution and contamination, in particular of Pb near ancient mines and harbors, as well as producing a global atmospheric impact. New evidence from ancient Gerasa (Jerash), Jordan, suggests that small-scale but intense Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad period urban, artisanal, and everyday site activities contributed to substantial heavy metal contamination of the city and its hinterland wadi, even though no metal mining took place and hardly any lead water pipes were used. Distribution of heavy metal contaminants, especially Pb, observed in the urban soils and sediments within this ancient city and its hinterland wadi resulted from aeolian, fluvial, cultural and post-depositional processes. These represent the contamination pathways of an ancient city-hinterland setting and reflect long-term anthropogenic legacies at local and regional scales beginning in the Roman period. Thus, urban use and re-use of heavy metal sources should be factored into understanding historical global-scale contaminant distributions.
Citation
Holdridge , G , Kristiansen , S M , Barfod , G H , Kinnaird , T C , Lichtenberger , A , Olsen , J , Philippsen , B , Raja , R & Simpson , I 2021 , ' A Roman provincial city and its contamination legacy from artisanal and daily-life activities ' , PLoS ONE , vol. 16 , no. 6 , e0251923 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251923
Publication
PLoS ONE
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright: © 2021 Holdridge et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding: This project was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation (R.R., www.carlsbergfondet.dk, Grant CF14-0467), Danish National Research Foundation (R.R., www.dg.dk, Grant 119), the Deutsche Forchungsgemeinschaft (A.L., https://www.dfg.de/, grant nos LI978/4-1 and LI978/4-2), the Deutscher Palästinaverein (A.L., https://www.palaestina-verein.de/), the Danish EliteForsk Award (R.R., https://ufm.dk/forskning-og-innovation/forskningsformidling/eliteforsk, grant 4094-00077B), and H. P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning (RR).Collections
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