Mineralized tissues and bio-mineral structures i.e. bones, teeth, shell, fish scale, cockles or urolithiasis have been found to be excellent “archives” related to living habits, nutrition and exposure to changing environmental conditions. Bones and teeth are found to maintain much of the “biological signature” from the living phase over a long time, revealing, for example, the uptake of contaminants from surrounding environment during certain periods. The analysis of archaeological bone or teeth materials can potentially provide a wealth of information about the chronology, diet and palaeoenvironment of past populations. Spatial analysis of fish scale samples could provide a historic record of metal concentrations in water ecosystem. The reasoning behind this is that two tissues (otoliths and scales) show growth annuli that are routinely used to age fish. Moreover it is possible to use of fish scales as a no lethal means of assessing metal body burden because scale can be sampled from a fish without

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