Beyond Plague Pits: Using Genetics to Identify Responses to Plague in Medieval Cambridgeshire

Craig Cessford; Christiana L. Scheib; Meriam Guellil; Marcel Keller; Craig Alexander; Sarah A. Inskip; John E. Robb

doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.19

Beyond Plague Pits: Using Genetics to Identify Responses to Plague in Medieval Cambridgeshire

Craig Cessford
, Christiana L. Scheib
, Meriam Guellil
, Marcel Keller
, Craig Alexander
, Sarah A. Inskip
, John E. Robb

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology

Publications: Contribution to journal › Article › Peer Reviewed

Abstract

Ancient DNA from Yersinia pestis has been identified in skeletons at four urban burial grounds in Cambridge, England, and at a nearby rural cemetery. Dating to between ad 1349 and 1561, these represent individuals who died of plague during the second pandemic. Most come from normative individual burials, rather than mass graves. This pattern represents a major advance in archaeological knowledge, shifting focus away from a few exceptional discoveries of mass burials to what was normal practice in most medieval contexts. Detailed consideration of context allows the authors to identify a range of burial responses to the second pandemic within a single town and its hinterland. This permits the creation of a richer and more varied narrative than has previously been possible.

Original language	English
Article number	146195712100019
Pages (from-to)	496-518
Number of pages	23
Journal	European Journal of Archaeology
Volume	24
Issue number	4
Early online date	17 Jul 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.19
Publication status	Published - 2021

Funding

The 'After the Plague' project is supported by the Wellcome Trust (Collaborative Grant 200368/Z/15/Z). Some graphics and radiocarbon determinations were funded by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, as part of the 'Resurrecting Cambridge(shire)'s medieval dead' project and work has also been supported by St John's College, Cambridge. A version of this article was presented at the Society for Medieval Archaeology conference 'The Long Black Death: New Perspectives' (York, July 2019). We are grateful to all our colleagues on the 'After the Plague' project, and to the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Cambridgeshire County Council Historical Environment Team, and the Duckworth Laboratory for access to their collections and sampling permissions. Thanks are also due to the original excavators of All Saints, Paul Craddock and Vince Gregory. We are grateful to the four anonymous reviewers for their comments. The aDNA lab at the University of Tartu is supported by the European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund [Project No. 2014-2020.4.01.16-0030] (Christiana Scheib, Meriam Guellil, Marcel Keller), and the Estonian Research Council, personal research grant [PRG243] (Christiana Scheib).

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

106014 Genomics
601004 Epigraphy

Keywords

plague
second plague pandemic
ancient DNA
burials
Cambridge
BLACK-DEATH

Access to Document

10.1017/eaa.2021.19Licence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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abstract = "Ancient DNA from Yersinia pestis has been identified in skeletons at four urban burial grounds in Cambridge, England, and at a nearby rural cemetery. Dating to between ad 1349 and 1561, these represent individuals who died of plague during the second pandemic. Most come from normative individual burials, rather than mass graves. This pattern represents a major advance in archaeological knowledge, shifting focus away from a few exceptional discoveries of mass burials to what was normal practice in most medieval contexts. Detailed consideration of context allows the authors to identify a range of burial responses to the second pandemic within a single town and its hinterland. This permits the creation of a richer and more varied narrative than has previously been possible.",

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Beyond Plague Pits: Using Genetics to Identify Responses to Plague in Medieval Cambridgeshire

Abstract

Funding

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

Keywords

Access to Document

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