Abstract
A partially preserved cranium affected by multiple lytic lesions was discovered accidentally by a farmer during fieldwork in Rgielsko village, Poland. The discovery was reported to the Prosecutor’s office and the police. Macroscopic and microscopic examinations, medical imaging methods, and radiocarbon dating were conducted. The main aim of the study was to diagnose lytic lesions and to study the archaeological context. The biological profile assessment results indicated the cranium belonged to an adult female. Computed tomography, common in clinical practice, enabled the diagnosis of the lesions as Plasma Cell Myeloma (PCM). Radiocarbon dating results showed that the individual dates to the 11th–12th centuries AD. The examined cranium may help expand the limited paleopathological literature on PCM in Poland and contribute to the global number of reported cases. The clinical examinations were limited to medical imaging studies because other diagnostic tests, such as blood/urine and bone marrow analyses, were not possible.
Similar content being viewed by others
Acknowledgements
We thank the Prosecutor's Office in Wągrowiec (Poland) for their permission to publish the author’s study results.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical approval and consent to participate
This article does not contain any studies with living human participants. After the submission of our expert opinion, the authors obtained permission from the Prosecutor’s Office in Wągrowiec (Poland) to publish our results. Authors followed guidance for the ethical treatment of human remains following BABAO (https://www.babao.org.uk/assets/Uploa ds/BABAO‑ Code‑ of‑ Ethics‑ 2019.pdf).
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Lorkiewicz-Muszyńska, D., Rzepczyk, S., Andrzejewska, M. et al. Plasma cell myeloma: multiple calvarial lytic lesions of an individual from the Middle Ages, Poland. npj Herit. Sci. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02613-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02613-5
