Almost inevitably you will ask with your class the time-honoured question: What have the Romans ever done for us?
Alongside the aqueducts, straight roads, sanitation, and baths, (not forgetting wine of course!), archaeologists can now add another legacy hitherto downplayed.
They examined a deep layer of sediment from the Roman town of Brigantes (in modern day Yorkshire), a major centre of metalworking. The 5-metre deep sample of earth revealed the first and unbroken continuous record of metal pollution from the 5th century (when the Romans left) to the present. So it seems as if metal production carried on using the ores and coal-fuel of the Roman period.
Far from an abrupt collapse of industry after the end of the Roman empire the new data suggests that the economy was stronger than the term ‘Dark Ages’ would imply.
University of Cambridge
