Fig 1.
Site location showing Palace Green at the heart of Durham, with the Castle to the north and the Cathedral to the south.
The excavation site is marked in yellow, north of Windy Gap. Photograph by courtesy of Purcell / Network Mapping.
Fig 2.
Skeleton 1 under excavation with left arm in unusual position, with partially exposed remains of other individuals illustrating how tightly packed the bodies were in feature F512.
Scale 0.5m. North to the bottom.
Table 1.
Summary of osteological data (from [1, 10]) and analyses conducted on each skeleton.
Fig 3.
Recruitment areas for the Scottish regiments compared with strontium isoscapes.
Places of origin of regiments in the Scottish army (based on [1: Fig 5.8]) overlaid on strontium isotope ratios maps of Britain (redrawn from [25]) and Ireland (redrawn from [26]). Black text indicates foot regiments and red text cavalry regiments.
Fig 4.
Results of microscopic examination of tooth wear (a) Sk 25 upper right canine: the arrow indicates the direction of the striations (photo: LM); (b) SEM image of notch on the upper right first incisor of Sk 28 with arrows indicating the direction of the striations.
Fig 5.
Examples of micro-debris recovered from calculus. (a) damaged starch granules, (b) burnt plant matter (potentially soot) in calculus, (c and d) mineral grit in calculus, and (e) conifer wood fragment with diagnostic pits. Scale bars in (a)-(d) are 20μm.
Fig 6.
Strontium and oxygen isotope results for the Palace Green individuals.
Scottish soldiers’ results (purple) overlaid on 584 published values for individuals buried in the British Isles [46] (open grey circles). Bars at the top show indicative ranges of precipitation and groundwater δ18O for Scotland (blue) and northern England (red), based on [49]. On the left are plotted environmental strontium isotope ratios for Scotland (blue) and northern England (red) [25]. Error bars (TEM, 1σ) for the Palace Green Library δ18OP data are shown bottom right. Arrows run forward in time from earliest tooth to latest tooth of an individual.
Fig 7.
Mean dentine δ15N and δ13C for the Palace Green individuals compared to bulk bone collagen δ15N and δ13C from humans and animals from selected British sites.
Table 2.
Mean dentine δ15N and δ13C for palace green individuals.
Fig 8.
M3 isotope profiles by approximate age of formation (a) δ15N, (b) δ13C.
Fig 9.
The taxonomic composition of the proteins detected in dental calculus.
(a) Proportions by broad taxonomic categories, (b) identified peptides of likely dietary origin.
Fig 10.
STRING network representation of human proteins identified in calculus.
Red nodes are proteins significantly enriched in the biological process of ‘Defence response to bacteria’ (nodes are labelled by protein name).
Fig 11.
Bacterial genera with the highest frequency of identified peptides within the calculus (square-root scale).
Fig 12.
Peptide abundance for selected periodontal and opportunistic pathogens within the calculus (square-root scale).
Table 3.
Samples and results for scurvy biomarker analyses.
Fig 13.
Numbers of collagen peptides containing the under-hydroxylated variant.
Where no bar is shown, no sample was taken, except where marked *. Dotted line: upper limit of 4 under-hydroxylated peptides observed in non-scorbutic individuals.
Table 4.
Summary comparison of historical evidence reviewed in the historical context section and the results of the archaeological science studies of this paper.