Category Archives: Publications and Resources

The impact of plague

It is difficult to assess the impact of the plague. A new study related to the Justinian plague based on written sources comes up with the hypothesis, that is has been overestimated

  • Mordechai, Lee; Eisenberg, Merle; Newfield, Timothy P.; Izdebski, Adam; Kay, Janet E.; Poinar, Hendrik (2019): The Justinianic Plague. An inconsequential pandemic? In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. – doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903797116

Ole Benedictow – Introduction & new publication

Dear all,

My monograph The Black Death and Later Plague Epidemics in the Scandinavian Countries: Perspectives and Controversies, Berlin: De Greuter, pp. 736, has just appeared: it is published in hardcover edition and also on the Internet in the form of Open access, De Greuter Open, https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/212904 . The book provides much new work on the Black Death, but also translations of works that so far has not been available in English. It also contains several long chapters that relate thoroughly to questions and controversies with respect to the presence of black rats in the Nordic countries (pp. 395-451 with three maps), transmission and dissemination by human ectoparasites, and the early-phase transmission theory or hypothesis rather (as long its advocates cannot explain how pathogenic doses of plague bacteria in the foregut of fleas are moved into a new bite site against the strong stream of a new blood meal).

This involves also the gathering together and presentation of all data on plague bacteraemia in rats and human beings to clarify their potential roles as sources of infection of feeding fleas and lice, the prevalence of bacteremia in rats and human beings measured as number of plague bacteria per mL (mm3) of blood, the volume of blood fleas or lice ingest (µL), and, thus, the potential role of human ectoparasites and rat fleas in the transmission and dissemination of plague bacteria. Finally, there is discussion of border values of Lethal Doses of transmission in the case of human beings and the presence and conditions for transmission of LDs of plague bacteria. There are also studies of the pattern, rhythm and seasonality of the spread of plague epidemics as reflections of and, thus, sources of information on the processes of transmission and dissemination.

The introductory general chapter on plague contains also two specific subchapters that really are lengthy articles. In Chapter 1.5, all paleobiological data on finds of aDNA or F1 antigen of Y. pestis in putative plague graves are gathered together with a comprehensive presentation of the research history and achievements of the new discipline of paleobiology in plague-related research, pp. 73-99. Chapter 1.4, reverts to the topic of alternative theories of plague, in this case an epidemiological alternative, which so far has not been addressed seriously and critically: ‘Serious Plague History under Pressure: The Twelfth Theory of Historical Plague. Comments on the Recent paper “Climate-driven Introductions of the Black Death and Successive Plague Reintroductions into Europe”, pp. 35-72. The relevant points on the role of human ectoparasites in the epidemiology of plague are discussed in the chapters mentioned above.

I will be grateful for all critical and supplementary reactions, which can come to good use now that my English publisher has asked me to write a 2nd edn. of my monograph on the Black Death and I am working on it to the hilt. This is also the case with respect to my previous monograph What Disease was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past, Leiden: Brill , pp. 746.

Happy New Year to all,

Ole J. Benedictow
Emeritus Professor,
Department of History,
University of Oslo

The European Black Death as the Source of Ancient and Modern Plague Pandemics

Again a study on the genetic history of the plague.

The Bronze Age Plague

A new study refers to the presence of yersinia pestis in Europe during the late neolithic/early bronze age:

  • Simon Rasmussen/ Morten Erik Allentoft/ Kasper Nielsen/ Ludovic Orlando/ Martin Sikora/ Karl-Göran Sjögren/ Anders Gorm Pedersen/ Mikkel Schubert/ Alex Van Dam/ Christian Moliin Outzen Kapel/ Henrik Bjørn Nielsen/ Søren Brunak/ Pavel Avetisyan/ Andrey Epimakhov/ Mikhail Viktorovich Khalyapin/ Artak Gnuni/ Aivar Kriiska/ Irena Lasak/ Mait Metspalu/ Vyacheslav Moiseyev/ Andrei Gromov/ Dalia Pokutta/ Lehti Saag/ Liivi Varul/ Levon Yepiskoposyan/ Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén/ Robert A. Foley/ Marta Mirazón Lahr/ Rasmus Nielsen/ Kristian Kristiansen/ Eske Willerslev: Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago. Cell 163/3, 2015, 571–582 (22.10.2015). – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.009 – open access!

If these hypothesis of a y.p. as a major trigger of the cultural and demographic changes at the end of the neolithic can be verified, comparisons with the 14th c. crisis will be of some interest. Prehistoric archaeology should check for indications e.g. of wheather extremes, the reorganisation of land use practices and increasing soil erosion in the time before the outbreak of the plague. Furthermore it should be tested, whether the health of the population was probably weak at that time.   However, by now neither the chronological nor the spatial framework of this postulated outbreak is clear.

 

Link

A yet unknown reservoir of yersinia pestis in Europe

A new study provides data on long-term presence of yersinia pestis from 14th c. onwards by using analysis of ancient DNA (aDNA). The study is based on two different sites in Germany, spanning a time period of more than 300 years. One of them is the 14th c. mass grave at the St. Leonhard church in Manching-Pichl, which is still an extraordinary site in Germany. Of 30 tested skeletons 8 were positive for Yersinia pestis-specific nucleic acid. As there are some significant similarities between the y.p. evidence with other European findings, the authors conclude, that “beside the assumed continuous reintroduction of Y. pestis from central Asia in multiple waves during the second pandemic, long-term persistence of Y. pestis in Europe in a yet unknown reservoir host has also to be considered.”

In order to understand the 14th c. crisis it will be interesting to see whether their model in which Yersinia pestis “was introduced to Europe from Asia in several waves combined with a long-time persistence of the pathogen in not yet identified reservoirs” is also valid for the time between the 6th and the 14th c. as this has some consequences in understanding possible interaction between landscape changes, extreme weather and the Black Death.

 

Introduction and new theses

Hello! My name is Michelle Laughran. I am Associate Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine and a historian of the plague and epidemic diseases in Renaissance Venice (https://sjcme.academia.edu/MichelleLaughran). I am thrilled to join the Black Death Network and I look forward to participating in group discussions!

I wanted to inform the group that the latest listing of theses and dissertations by the University of Pittsburgh Health Library Systems has been published, and there are a few entries of potential interest of plague historians… In addition, I also went back through about five years of past issues and dug up other theses relevant to the fourteenth century as well.  Hope they may be useful!

Many thanks for welcoming me and very best wishes, Michelle

Publication #: 3581344
Property, power and patriarchy: The decline of women’s property right in England after the Black Death
Phifer, Michael J., PhD
University of Houston, 2014, 330 pages

Publication #: 3625805
Pestilence and politics: A global history of the Marseille plague
Ermus, Cindy, PhD
Florida State University, 2014, 247 pages

Publication #: 3605732
“Robbed of their Minds”: Madness, Medicine and Society in Southeastern Germany from 1350 to 1500
Koenig, Anne Morgan, PhD
Northwestern University, 2013, 572 pages

Publication #: 3598211
Childless Queens and Child-like Kings: Negotiating Royal Infertility in England, 1382–1471
Geaman, Kristen Lee, PhD
University of Southern California, 2013, 361 pages

Publication #: 3435307
Heaven in a bottle: Franciscan apocalypticism and the elixir, 1250-1360
Matus, Zachary Alexander, PhD
Harvard University, 2010, 245 pages

Publication #: 3423088
The “Carrara Herbal” in context: Imitation, exemplarity, and invention in late fourteenth-century Padua
Kyle, Sarah Rozalja, PhD
Emory University, 2010, 316 pages

Reintroduction or European reservoir? – a key question for possible effects of 14th c. landscape history on the Black Death

A new article deals with the question of reintroductions of the Black Death from Asia and the role of reservoirs of Yersinia pestis in Europe. A database of historically recorded outbreaks of the plague is correlated with climate data from Central Asia as the main reservoir of the plague. As there is a correlation between climate change and outbreaks of the plague in Europe 15± 1 y, the authors see a mechanism starting with a situation, “when
the climate subsequently becomes less favorable, it facilitates the collapse of plague-infected rodent populations, forcing their fleas to find alternative hosts.” Such alternative hosts could be camels, which “are known to become infected relatively easy from infected fleas in plague foci, and can transmit the disease to humans.” Trading with caravans could transport the plague “across ∼4,000 km from the mountains of western Central Asia to the coast of the Black Sea”. The authors compare the transport rate of ∼333–400 km per year with that of the thrd pandemic in China ( ca 123 km per year) and the Black Death in Europe, which is however much faster (1330 km per year).

According to this model the plague of 1348/49 is in fact a reintroduction from Asia. This is remarkable, when thinking of the effect of landscape changes in Central Europe, which in fact created a situation, when anthropogenic alterations of the landscape provided a situation which had the potential to cause extrem weather, soil erosion and effects on rodents’ population. If there was no European reservoir of yersinia pestis at that time in Europe, the risk of an anthropogenic factor in the outbreak of the Black Death is significantly smaller (comp. Yersinia pestis – the missing ecological and historical dimension. Archaeologik [10.11.2011]. Attempting to take an ecological perspective on the Black Death is an important step also for a better understanding of the 14th c. crisis.

Boris V. Schmid; Ulf Büntgen; W. Ryan Easterday; Christian Ginzler; Lars Walløe; Barbara Bramanti; Nils Chr. Stenseth, Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe. PNAS Published online before print February 23, 2015 –  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1412887112

with supplements: http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/02/20/1412887112.DCSupplemental

Authors’ abstract
The Black Death, originating in Asia, arrived in the Mediterranean harbors of Europe in 1347 CE, via the land and sea trade routes of the ancient Silk Road system. This epidemic marked the start of the second plague pandemic, which lasted in Europe until the early 19th century. This pandemic is generally understood as the consequence of a singular introduction of Yersinia pestis, after which the disease established itself in European rodents over four centuries. To locate these putative plague reservoirs, we studied the climate fluctuations that preceded regional plague epidemics, based on a dataset of 7,711 georeferenced historical plague outbreaks and 15 annually resolved tree-ring records from Europe and Asia. We provide evidence for repeated climate-driven reintroductions of the bacterium into European harbors from reservoirs in Asia, with a delay of 15 ± 1 y. Our analysis finds no support for the existence of permanent plague reservoirs in medieval Europe.

Ecological Approaches in Medieval Rural Archaeology

  • R. Schreg, Ecological Approaches in Medieval Rural Archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology 17(1), 2014, 83-119
    DOI 10.1179/1461957113Y.0000000045

    [There is currently no Open Access, sorry!].

In recent years, scientific methods of bio- and geoarchaeology have become increasingly important for archaeological research. Political changes since the 1990s have reshaped the archaeological community. At the same time environmental topics have gained importance in modern society, but the debate lacks an historical understanding. Regarding medieval rural archaeology, we need to ask how this influences our archaeological research on medieval settlements, and how ecological approaches fit into the self-concept of medieval archaeology as a primarily historical discipline. Based mainly on a background in German medieval archaeology, this article calls attention to more complex ecological research questions. Medieval village formation and the late medieval crisis are taken as examples to sketch some hypotheses and research questions. The perspective of a village ecosystem helps bring together economic aspects, human ecology and environmental history. There are several implications for archaeological theory as well as for archaeological practice. Traditional approaches from landscape archaeology are insufficient to understand the changes within village ecosystems. We need to consider social aspects and subjective recognition of the environment by past humans as a crucial part of human–nature interaction. Use of the perspective of village ecosystems as a theoretical background offers a way to examine individual historical case studies with close attention to human agency. Thinking in terms of human ecology and environmental history raises awareness of some interrelations that are crucial to understanding past societies and cultural change. (Abstract)

The article takes the late medieval crisis as an example for the complexity of interaction and proposes to understand the Black Death within the framework of human ecology.

Factors and hypothetical interactions during the late medieval crisis
Factors and hypothetical interactions during the late medieval crisis

 

 

 

re: Livestock size change in the 14th century

For a little while now, I have been interested in identifying and explaining changes in the size of domestic livestock in the 14th century. This research was originally inspired by my analysis of the animal remains from Dudley Castle, West Midlands, UK, which revealed a statistically-significant increase in the size of cattle, sheep, pig, and even chicken, between two phases of occupation (1262-1321 and 1321-1397). These changes were much earlier than those documented at other sites (mostly 15th-17th century), and I interpreted them  within the context of altered tenurial and agricultural practices in the wake of the Black Death: Thomas, R. 2005. Zooarchaeology, improvement and the British Agricultural Revolution. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9 (2): 71-88.

Since then, a number of additional sites have provided evidence of livestock size change in the 14th century – seemingly adding weight to this idea. Just recently, however, I have completed a collaborative project exploring size change in domestic livestock in medieval and early modern England, using data from London: Thomas, R., Holmes, M., and Morris, J. 2013. “So bigge as bigge may be”: tracking size and shape change in domestic livestock in London (AD 1220-1900). Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (8): 3309-3325.

In this study, we analysed 7966 individual cattle, sheep, pig and chicken bone measurements from 105 sites excavated in London dating to the period AD 1220–1900 and multiple episodes of size change were identified. The earliest evidence for size change in cattle and sheep occurs in the early 14th century: this is earlier than any previously documented instance of livestock size increase in the medieval period. The fact that only cattle and sheep witness size increase is interesting, given the major outbreaks of disease affecting these animals in the first quarter of the 14th century: sheep murrain was epidemic between 1314 and 1316, while a panzootic in cattle occurred between 1319 and 1322. Given the timing of the size increases and the fact that only cattle and
sheep are affected, re-stocking policies might be an obvious explanation. However, selective breeding from larger animals was probably not the cause: there is no zooarchaeological evidence for large livestock elsewhere in England and Wales in this period and the large-scale transnational cattle trade did not commence until the late 15th century. Perhaps, a temporary relative increase in mean size may have
occurred in the archaeological (death) assemblage, because of relatively lower slaughter rates of female cattle following the pestilence. This might be explained by the
fact that the slaughtering of females, which survived the panzootic, might have been delayed, to re-populate the herds; consequently, survivors were used for a longer period than would have normally been the case. Alternatively, the larger size of cattle and sheep may reflect the actions of natural selection. It is entirely conceivable that smaller, weaker animals were more susceptible to malnutrition and ultimately mortality, while the larger, healthier animals survived to perpetuate their genes.

At the moment I am fairly open about the most likely explanation, but I would welcome any thoughts if you have any.

Environmental damages in 14th century Southwest Germany

An interesting new study proves extreme  gullying in a landscape in Southwestern Germany.  By now there have been little indications that 1342 St. Magdalen’s flood had impact also on settlement landscapes in Southwest Germany.

Today this landscape – the southwestern Schönbuch natural park north of Tübingen – is completely forrested, but it must have been a rather open landscape vulnerable to erosion in the 14th century. In neighbouring settlements there are various indication for rural industries. There need for firing wood may have been an important factor for deforestation and environmental risk. A blog-post at Archaeologik discusses the archaeological evidence of settlement activity.

Documents from the town of  Esslingen, less than 30 km northwest of the gullies indicate that in fact rains in summer 1342 also affected the Neckar region (http://archaeologik.blogspot.de/2013/01/bodenerosion-1342-ein-rechtsstreit-in.html).

erosion gully in the southwestern Schönbuch forest northwest of Tübingen. Todya the landscape is completely forrested with little traces of medieval settlement.
(Foto: R. Schreg, 2013)

Rats cannot have been intermediate hosts for Yersinia pestis during medieval plague epidemics in Northern Europe

Journal of Archaeological Science

Volume 40, Issue 4, April 2013, Pages 1752–1759

Rats cannot have been intermediate hosts for Yersinia pestis during medieval plague epidemics in Northern Europe

  • a University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen, Norway
  • b Department of Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1103 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.12.007


Abstract

The commonly accepted understanding of modern human plague epidemics has been that plague is a disease of rodents that is transmitted to humans from black rats, with rat fleas as vectors. Historians have assumed that this transmission model is also valid for the Black Death and later medieval plague epidemics in Europe. Here we examine information on the geographical distribution and population density of the black rat (Rattus rattus) in Norway and other Nordic countries in medieval times. The study is based on older zoological literature and on bone samples from archaeological excavations. Only a few of the archaeological finds from medieval harbour towns in Norway contain rat bones. There are no finds of black rats from the many archaeological excavations in rural areas or from the inland town of Hamar. These results show that it is extremely unlikely that rats accounted for the spread of plague to rural areas in Norway. Archaeological evidence from other Nordic countries indicates that rats were uncommon there too, and were therefore unlikely to be responsible for the dissemination of human plague. We hypothesize that the mode of transmission during the historical plague epidemics was from human to human via an insect ectoparasite vector.


Effects of 1342 rainfalls at the Neckar river, southwest Germany

Written, archaeological, and geographical sources show the heavy effects of the rainfalls in summer 1342. The mostly refer to the river Main, the middle Rhine, Elbe, and Weser.  A charter from the town of Esslingen situated at the river Neckar, dated 9th of September 1342 documents a court ruling. The local Augustinian monastery sued  against Kaisheim abbey, which owned a nearby vineyard. Soil was flooded into the Augustinian monastery. The document shows that the rainfalls in summer 1342 also affected the Neckar valley.

 

 

The town of Esslingen depicted by Andreas Kieser. The wineyard ist situated below the castle
(HStA Stuttgart H 107/15 Bd 7 Bl. 22, via Wikimedia Commons)