Identifying evidence for past mining and metallurgy from a record of metal contamination preserved in an ombrotrophic mire near Leadhills, SW Scotland, UK

This study presents a new 3600-year record of past metal contamination from a bog located close to the Leadhills and Wanlockhead orefield of southwest Scotland. A peat core, collected from Toddle Moss, was radiocarbon (14C) dated and analysed for trace metal concentrations (by EMMA) and lead isotopes (by ICP-MS) to reconstruct the atmospheric deposition history of trace metal contamination, in particular, lead. The results show good agreement with documented historical and archaeological records of mining and metallurgy in the region: the peak in metal mining during the 18th century, the decline of lead mining during the Anglo-Scottish war and lead smelting during the early medieval period. There may also have been earlier workings during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages indicated by slight increases in lead concentrations, the Pb/Ti ratio and a shift in 206Pb/207Pb ratios, which compare favourably to the signatures of a galena ore from Leadhills and Wanlockhead. In contrast to other records across Europe, no sizeable lead enrichment was recorded during the Roman Iron Age, suggesting that the orefield was not a significant part of the Roman lead extraction industry in Britain. These findings add to the various strands of archaeological evidence that hint at an early lead extraction and metallurgical industry based in southern Scotland. The results also provide further evidence for specific regional variations in the evolution of mining and metallurgy and an associated contamination signal during prehistoric and Roman times across Europe

BioTIME 2.0: Expanding and Improving a Database of Biodiversity Time Series

Motivation Here, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accuracy of the records, as well as the metadata. Moreover, we now provide an R package (BioTIMEr) to facilitate use of the database. Main Types of Variables Included The database is composed of one main data table containing the abundance records and 11 metadata tables. The data are organised in a hierarchy of scales where 11,989,233 records are nested in 1,603,067 sample events, from 553,253 sampling locations, which are nested in 708 studies. A study is defined as a sampling methodology applied to an assemblage for a minimum of 2 years. Spatial Location and Grain Sampling locations in BioTIME are distributed across the planet, including marine, terrestrial and freshwater realms. Spatial grain size and extent vary across studies depending on sampling methodology. We recommend gridding of sampling locations into areas of consistent size. Time Period and Grain The earliest time series in BioTIME start in 1874, and the most recent records are from 2023. Temporal grain and duration vary across studies. We recommend doing sample-level rarefaction to ensure consistent sampling effort through time before calculating any diversity metric. Major Taxa and Level of Measurement The database includes any eukaryotic taxa, with a combined total of 56,400 taxa. Software Format csv and. SQL