It has been a busy spring. I haven’t had a chance to blog as much as I would have liked to, but I have done quite a bit of reading. Some of my reading has been on the complex world of the first plague pandemic. To say that it was transformative would be an understatement. One of the social questions for the first plague pandemic is how does plague and other natural disasters effect a population that is the midst of conversion? When the Black Death came it encountered a fully Christian and Muslim world, but not so during the first pandemic. Most of Europe was not yet Christian in 541. There were some Jews, Christians of several varieties, Roman pagans, Germanic pagans, Celtic pagans, Zoroastrians, North African and Middle Eastern pagans, etc. Yet at the end of the pandemic period, Islam is born (and fast growing) and Christianity is dominant in Europe (and united by Rome). The plague began in a polytheistic world and ended in a monotheistic one. What role did the plague play, if any? Yet to be determined. This really isn’t a peripheral issue. Every writer of the first pandemic was involved in this transformation (winners and losers) in some way and it effected how they wrote about the plague and other calamities. So I have a lot of reading to do; below is a start and a few other things that caught my attention.
Books:
Marilyn Dunn. (2010) The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, c. 497- c.700: Discourses of Life, Death and Afterlife.
Marilyn Dunn (2013) Belief and Religion in Barbarian Europe, c. 350-700. Bloomsbury.
Peter Brown (2015) The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Christianity. Harvard University Press.
Peter Heather (2013) The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders. Oxford University Press.
Articles:
Balbir Singh and Cyrus Saneshvar (2013) Human Infections and Detection of Plasmodium knowlesi. Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 26 (2): 165-184.
Runfola, J. K., House, J., Miller, L., Coltron, L., Hite, D., Hawley, A., et al. (2015). Outbreak of Human Pneumonic Plague with Dog-to-Human and Possible Human-to-Human Transmission — Colorado, June–July 2014. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 64(16), 429–434.
Smith-Guzmán, N. E. (2015). Cribra orbitalia in the ancient Nile Valley and its connection to malaria. International Journal of Paleopathology, 10, 1–12. doi:10.1016/j.ijpp.2015.03.001
Benovitz, N. (2014). The Justinianic plague: evidence from the dated Greek epitaphs of Byzantine Palestine and Arabia. Journal of Roman Archaeology. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70323-2)
Bernard Bachrach, (2007) Plague, Population, and Economy in Merovingian Gaul. Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association. 3: 29-57.
Sarris, P. (2002). The Justinianic plague: origins and effects. Continuity and Change, 17(02), 169–182. doi:10.1017/S0268416002004137
Newfield, T. P. (2015). Human–Bovine Plagues in the Early Middle Ages. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 46(1), 1–38. doi:10.1179/146141010X12640787648612
Inskip, S. A., Taylor, G. M., Zakrzewski, S. R., Mays, S. A., Pike, A. W. G., Llewellyn, G., et al. (2015). Osteological, Biomolecular and Geochemical Examination of an Early Anglo-Saxon Case of Lepromatous Leprosy. PLoS ONE, 10(5), e0124282. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124282.s001
Shanks, G. D., & White, N. J. (2013). The activation of vivax malaria hypnozoites by infectious diseases. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 13(10), 900–906. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70095-1
Dick, H. C., Pringle, J. K., Sloane, B., Carver, J., Haffenden, A., Stephen Porter, H. A., et al. (2015). Detection and characterisation of Black Death burials by multi-proxy geophysical methods. Journal of Archaeological Science, 1–50. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2015.04.010
Lowell, J. L., Antolin, M. F., Andersen, G. L., Hu, P., Stokowski, R. P., & Gage, K. L. (2015). Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Reveal Spatial Diversity Among Clones of Yersinia pestis During Plague Outbreaks in Colorado and the Western United States. Vector Borne and Zoonotic Diseases (Larchmont, N.Y.), 15(5), 291–302. doi:10.1089/vbz.2014.1714
Neil, B. (2013). The Papacy in the Age of Gregory the Great. A Companion to Gregory the Great, 3–28.
Brogiolo, G. P. (2015). Flooding in Northern Italy during the Early Middle Ages: resilience and adaption. Post-Classical Archaeologies, 5, 47–68.
Kostick, C., & Ludlow, F. (2015). The dating of volcanic events and their impact upon European society, 400-800 CE. Post-Classical Archaeologies. 5, 7–30.
Riehm, J. M., Projahn, M., Vogler, A. J., Rajerison, M., Andersen, G., Hall, C. M., et al. (2015). Diverse Genotypes of Yersinia pestis Caused Plague in Madagascar in 2007. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 9(6), e0003844. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0003844.s002
Makundi, R. H., Massawe, A. W., Borremans, B., Laudisoit, A., & Katakweba, A. (2015). We are connected: flea–host association networks in the plague outbreak focus in the Rift Valley, northern Tanzania. Wildlife Research, 42(2), 196. doi:10.1071/WR14254
Contagions 