Flint Dibble on archaeology: what the evidence says · JRE #2136
SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
And I'd say we could definitively prove there was no large-scale metallurgy in the Ice Age. If you look at ice cores in the Arctic, right, we can track metallurgy of the Roman period, If you look at ice cores in the Arctic, right, we can track metallurgy of the Roman period, of medieval periods, based on lead emissions that end up in these ice cores. And there are no emissions from metallurgy in the Ice Age.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Dibble's characterization matches the published ice-core record. Greenland and Arctic ice cores preserve a lead-pollution signal from ancient lead-silver mining and smelting, and researchers have used it to reconstruct European emissions year by year. A 2018 PNAS study (McConnell et al.) measured lead deposited between 1100 BCE and 800 CE and found emissions rose with Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman mining and peaked under the Roman Empire, tracking wars, plagues, and imperial expansion. A 2019 companion study of 13 Arctic cores documented that pre-industrial Arctic lead pollution came primarily from European mining and metallurgy through the medieval period. Because even modest pre-modern smelting produced a detectable atmospheric lead signature, the absence of any such anthropogenic lead signal in Pleistocene (Ice Age) ice supports the conclusion that no large-scale metallurgy existed then.