Presentations on the Plague from the European Association of Archaeologists, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016

I just discovered that most of the presentations from the "Plague in Diachronic and Interdisciplinary Perspective" session of the Europan Association of Archaeologists meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania on 2 September 2016 are now on YouTube.  I think I have collected them all here. Enjoy 3 hours of plague talks! Introduction-Plague in diachronic and Interdisciplinary perspective by...

Plague in 6th century Aschheim and Altenerding, Bavaria

Since I last wrote about Bavaria, the aDNA centers have been busy. With the accepted manuscript of the second new paper available this past week, its time for an update. The fourth paper on Aschheim not only confirmed the first three, but it also produced the first full genome of Yersinia pestis for the Plague...

Molecular Confirmation of Yersinia pestis in 6th century Bavaria

Erasing any lingering doubts about the agent of the Plague of Justinian, a group of German biological anthropologists have shown conclusively that Yersinia pestis caused an epidemic in a 6th century Bavarian cemetery at Aschheim. Harbeck et al (2013) provide a convincing refutation of previous theories about the etiologic agent of the Plague of Justinian....

The Dancing Plague of 1518

John Waller. The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Sourcebooks, 2009 (paperback). Previously published as A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 (Icon books, hardback, 2008). Topic: Dancing Mania, choreomania Time and Place: Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire, 1518 Audience: General Discussion:...

Pausing for Peace

Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and good will toward all men. The Christmas spirit can be found in the most unlikely of places. Perhaps it is in the middle of these places that Christmas is yearned for more than anywhere else. Such was the case on Christmas eve 1914 when both...

Trench Fever in German Mass Burial

Trench fever seems to be all the rage these days in paleomicrobiology. It seems as though every time Bartonella quintana is added to a panel of pathogens for aDNA screening its found at some level. So far its been found in in a tooth from 4000 before present, in late medieval Venice, 14th century France,...

A Plague Crypt from Late Medieval Bavaria

St Leonard Catholic Church in Machnung-Pichl, near Ingolstadt Bavaria, Germany held a secret for many years. Renovations to the church back in 1984 found a mass burial site under the sacristy, 75 human skeletons stacked like lasagna in four layers with a little dirt between each layer (Wiechmann, Harbeck, & Grupe, 2010). The design of...

Plague DNA from Late Antique Bavaria

The first plague pandemic was not recorded in Bavaria, or anywhere in the Germanic territory that I am aware of. The grave was not a typical 'plague pit'. It was a rich grave of an adult woman and a young girl (individuals 166 and 167) from a cemetery in Aschheim, Bavaria. With no visible signs...