Tag Archives: Yersinia pestis

Introduction – Gunnar Neumann

I am a PhD student at the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, soon moving to the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

My research focus are ancient pathogens in western Eurasia and their evolutionary history. Among others, I work on Yersinia pestis from the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age until late medieval times. 

 

Gunnar Neumann

PhD student at the Department of Archaeogenetics of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena

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EAA Vilnius 2016: Session report on “Plague in diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective”

The following session report by Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), Sacha Kacki (Université de Bordeaux, France), Marcel Keller (MPI-SHH Jena, Germany) and Christina Lee (University of Nottingham, UK) will be published in The European Archaeologist. With kind permission of the EAA.

Edit 17-02-07: filmed talks are now linked under the respective name.

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Plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, occurred in at least three major historical pandemics: the Justinianic Plague (6th to 8th century), the Black Death (1348-1352, with further epidemic outbreaks until the 18th century), and the Modern or Hong Kong Plague (19th to 20th century). However, it appears that the disease may be much older: DNA from Bronze Age human skeleton has recently shown that plague first emerged at least as early as 3000 BC. As any disease, plague has both a biological as well as a social dimension. Different disciplines can therefore explicate different aspects of plague which can lead to a better understanding of the disease and its medical and social implications.

The session was held on 2nd September 2016 as part of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the EAA with the aim of bringing together researchers from different disciplines who work on plague. It addressed a series of research questions, such as:

  • Which disciplines can contribute to the research on plague?
  • What are their methodological possibilities and the limitations of their methodologies?
  • How can different disciplines work together in order to gain a more realistic and detailed picture of plague in different periods and regions?
  • How did different societies react to plague? In which way may we prove or disprove evidence for such reactions – and which disciplines may contribute to the debate?
  • What where the common aspects, and what the differences of the various plague outbreaks? Are there any epidemiological characteristics that are essential and/or unique to plague?
  • What are possible implications of the pandemic spread and endemic occurrence of plague through the ages for the interpretation of historical and cultural phenomena?

Continue reading EAA Vilnius 2016: Session report on “Plague in diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective”

Marcel Keller

Co-Editor of the Black Death Network
Postdoc in Palaeogenetics at U. of Tartu

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Introduction – Marcel Keller

I am a PhD student in the department Archaeogenetics of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. My academic background is Biology (B.Sc./M.Sc.) with specialization in Anthropology and Human Biology. The main project of my PhD is the reconstruction of genomes of Yersinia pestis of both the first (Justinianic Plague) and second pandemic (following the Black Death) in Europe. Additional ancient genomes of Y. pestis are crucial for phylogenetic analyses and allow a more detailed picture of the spatiotemporal distribution of plague.

Marcel Keller

Co-Editor of the Black Death Network
Postdoc in Palaeogenetics at U. of Tartu

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

Again a study on the genetic history of the plague.

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

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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.

 

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Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

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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.

 

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

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EAA Vilnius 2016: Plague in diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective – CfP

Call for Paper for the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologist in Vilnius 31.8.-4.9.2016

http://eaavilnius2016.lt/

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Plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, occurred in at least three major historical pandemics: the Justinianic Plague (6th to 8th century), the Black Death (from 14th century onwards), and the modern or Hong Kong Plague (19th to 20th century).Yet DNA from bronze age human skeleton has recently shown that the plague first emerged at least as early as 3000 BC. Plague is, as any disease, both a biological as well as a social entity. Different disciplines can therefore elucidate different aspects of the plague, which can lead to a better understanding of this disease and its medical and social implications.

The session shall address questions like

  • Which disciplines can contribute to the research on the plague? What are their methodological possibilities and limitations?
  • How can they work together in order to come to a more realistic and detailed picture of the
    plague in different times and regions?
  • Which ways had societies to react to the plague? How can they be studied or proved?
  • Which commons and differences can be seen between the Justinianic Plague and later plague epidemics? Are there epidemiological characteristics that are essential and/or unique to plague?
  • What are possible implications of the pandemic spread and endemic occurrence of plague
    through the ages for the interpretation of historical and cultural phenomena?

We would like to invite researchers from the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, biology, history, medicine and related subjects to present papers in our session.

Abstract nr. TH5-05
Presentation Preference – Regular session (half day)

Author – Gutsmiedl-Schümann, Doris, Universität Bonn, Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche  Archäologie, Bonn, Germany (Presenting author)
Co-author(s) – Kacki, Sacha, Anthropologie des Populations Passées et Présentes, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France
Co-author(s) – Keller, Marcel, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena,
Germany
Co-author(s) – Lee, Christina, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Topic – Science and Interdisciplinarity in Archaeology

Keywords: diachronic perspective, Plague

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

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Yersinia pestis – the missing ecological and historical dimension

Reposted from http://archaeologik.blogspot.de/2011/11/yersinia-pestis-missing-ecological-and.html

Yersinia pestis, Direct Fluorescent Antibody Stain (DFA),
200x Magnification
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s
Public Health Image Library [PHIL],
identification number #1918 [public domain]).
In a recent article a group of German and Canadian researchers presented the genome of Yersinia pestis as it has been extracted from burials of the London East Smithfield burial ground dated to 1348/49 (Bos et al. 2011). This site has been excavated by the Museum of London after it has been localised in 1986 (Grainger et al. 2008).
The article aims at the reconstruction of the ancient genome of Yersinia pestis, as this promises implications for the understanding of infectious diseases, as “genomic data from ancient microbes may help to elucidate mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infections”.
The authors conclude:
1.) “Genetic architecture and phylogenetic analysis indicate that the ancient organism is ancestral to most extant strains and sits very close to the ancestral node of all Y. pestis commonly associated with human infection. Temporal estimates suggest that the Black Death of 1347–1351 was the main historical event responsible for the introduction and widespread dissemination of the ancestor to all currently circulating Y. pestis strains pathogenic to humans.” The classic Black Death was quite different from previous epidemics. The authors refer to the Justinian plague “popularly assumed to have resulted from the same pathogen: our temporal estimates imply that the pandemic was either caused by a Y. pestis variant that is distinct from all currently circulating strains commonly associated with human infections, or it was another disease altogether.”
2.) “Comparisons against modern genomes reveal no unique derived positions in the medieval organism, indicating that the perceived increased virulence of the disease during the Black Death may not have been due to bacterial phenotype. These findings support the notion that factors other than microbial genetics, such as environment, vector dynamics and host susceptibility, should be at the forefront of epidemiological discussions regarding emerging Y. pestis infections.”

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

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