Identification and interpretation of historical cemeteries linked to epidemics

Abstract

Several types of event (wars, massacres, natural disasters, famines or epidemics) can lead to mortality crises resulting in the formation of funerary deposits unlike those found during more ordinary periods. This chapter specifically reviews the exploitation of demographic data from dental and bone remains to resolve the cause of a mortality crisis. Different age groups in a population are not affected in the same manner by all crises and it is therefore possible that the detection of possible anomalies in the demographic parameters among the archaeological series studied can be a useful indicator as to the origin of the deaths. This fact is illustrated by the analysis of three series in France in which palaeobiochemistry confirmed the presence of the Yersinia pestis plague bacillus. These results have allowed us to refine the methodological and analytical thematic study of both funerary archaeology and anthropology. Historical demographic analyses must be intensified in order to define more precisely the impact of different types of crisis on a population, thus deriving different typical profiles allowing interpretation of age and sex distributions and their possible anomalies. Analysis of osteological samples from periods of epidemic should cover as large a choice of sites as possible, both chronologically and geographically, in order to establish not only one model but several models illustrating crisis mortality. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.