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 north-east 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 archeological 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.”
Traces in teeth and on paper
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 bioarcheologists.”
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, recovering 236 burials.
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.
Because this didn’t tell the researchers about the calendar years when mineralization failures happened, they used Coach Lane’s burial register. It chronicles ages and years of death for many of the 197 individuals listed, and birth years could be estimated for 109 community members by subtracting age at death from year of death. Because these dates could not be matched to individuals – the graves weren’t marked – the researchers looked at the community as a whole. The data showed that out of the 109 people with known birth years, 91 were born within 10 years after a major volcanic eruption. 41 were born during periods when low solar output and volcanic activity co-occurred.
“The Quakers were known to keep precise records, which makes them an important source of information about themselves, but also about the north-east of England, where they were very prominent in local history,” explained Kendall. “That they carefully recorded names, years of death, and ages at death provided us a window into what was going on with the environment when most of the people buried at Coach Lane were growing up and forming teeth.”
The full human experience
Adding climate to the mix of factors – both natural and human-made – that affected people’s health is important to gain a complete picture.
“Humans are incredibly complicated. We’re physical creatures defined by our biology. We’re cultural creatures defined by beliefs and the systems they reinforce. And we’re products of our environment,” said Kendall. “No part overrides another; they all interact. When we assess one aspect of human biology – vitamin D deficiency during the Industrial period – it’s going to be in the context of needing to grapple with the full dynamics of the human experience.”
“We think of climate instability as a modern challenge, but it’s really nothing new as human problems go,” Kendall concluded. “Whether it’s pandemics, economic crises, or climate change, it’s important to understand the ways that people have adapted to similar issues in the past and use that information to help people thrive in the future.”
Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology
Experimental study
'The bright sun was extinguish'd': Metabolic health and vitamin D status in a Little Ice Age population (18th-19th c.) in North East England
5-Nov-2026
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.