This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: During England's Industrial Revolution, when the country's farming-based economy transformed into an industrial one between roughly 1760 and 1840, pollution, harsh working conditions, inadequate housing and limited access to sunlight drove disease. Rickets, in which the growing skeleton fails to properly mineralize, was commonplace among children.
Traditionally, urbanization, latitude and socioeconomic status were considered the main drivers. A factor that has largely been overlooked is climate. Now, a new Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology study has reassessed teeth from a long-disused cemetery in northeast England, Coach Lane, to investigate whether climatic fluctuation contributed to childhood vitamin D deficiencies during that time.
"Most people buried at Coach Lane lived during periods affected by environmental differences in UV light availability, which may explain the high rates of rickets and defects in tooth dentin, and suggest a major problem with vitamin D deficiency," said first author Dr. Ellen Kendall, an archaeological researcher at Durham University. "Realizing that burial registers would allow us to reconsider the climatic chronology of this population felt like a new approach to understanding historical childhood vitamin D deficiency." At the time of the Industrial Revolution, the Little Ice Age, an extended cooling period between the 13th and 19th centuries caused by heightened volcanic and low solar activity, limited UV exposure.
How climatic fluctuation may have impacted human health during this time, however, hasn't been examined in detail. "Human bioarchaeologists' primary area of expertise is understanding health from the human skeleton. To do that, we have to consider a wide range of issues: political, environmental, dietary, social and more," said Kendall.
"The complex range of interacting factors may have put climate off the radar of many human bioarchaeologists." The Quaker cemetery at Coach Lane in North Shields was actively used between 1711 and 1829. Around that time, North Shields transformed from a fishing village into an industrial port. The cemetery was excavated in 2010, and 236 burials were recovered.
Using 30 teeth from 21 unidentified individuals, the researchers examined mineralization failures—when dentin, the inner layer of the tooth, fails to fully turn into hard, calcified tissue. These mineralization failures can be a normal part of tooth growth but may suggest vitamin D deficiency if they appear at regular intervals and are separated by normal dentin. Because teeth form and grow on a set natural schedule, the researchers could determine at what ages dentin failed to mineralize within the community: mostly during infancy and childhood.
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