#litharge

An abandoned mausoleum and silver extraction taking place on an industrial scale at a Roman site in rural Kent have left archaeologists with a 1500-year-old mystery.

Archaeologists working on an excavation at Grange Farm, near Gillingham, discovered 15 kilograms of litharge—a material associated with the extraction of silver from other metals. This is the largest amount ever found on a British Roman site and greatly exceeds the amount that archaeologists would normally expect to find on a rural settlement such as that at Grange Farm, suggesting that the refining of silver was taking place on an industrial scale. Read more.