The study was in part a response to Russell’s challenge for historians to engage more strongly with the sciences. Despite the methodological challenges that integrating the two disciplines poses in theory, particularly in relation to the experimental nature of geo and environmental science and establishing the date of pollution deposition, in practice it was successful. Tightly integrating the environmental record with the archive material and directing and shaping the ‘science’ to fit the historical research agenda from the outset facilitated, as Russell predicted, a much deeper and richer understanding of the relationship between historic mining activity and contemporary pollution problems at the site that neither discipline in isolation could have achieved. The record contained in the soil material bridged the gap when the documentary evidence was sparse or non-existent, as with pinpointing the precise location of the smelter and the
potential re-working of the wastes at Glengarry by the TMC and the TLZC. On the other hand, archival sources can provide (and also challenge) the historical context in which the scientific data is interpreted. Historical research similarly plugs gaps in the wider understanding of current pollution problems such as in the journey over time between source of contaminant and its current deposition. Furthermore, detailed documentary accounts of the machinery and the processes that were utilised at the time, particularly at Glengarry, tied into the environmental record in this way, sheds light on the cultural origins and formation of technosols. Technosols are a new classification of soils introduced into the World Reference Base for Soil Resources in 2006 in order to better understand soils solely derived from industrial activity (IUSS Working Group WRB 2006).