Contours of the Black Death Cemetery at Charterhouse Square, London

Excavations for the Crossrail Extension project discovered the second major Black Death cemetery in London in 2013. This week the first peer-reviewed publication of findings from the site appeared (in press).  As a rescue excavation in the midst of a construction project, the site had to be quickly surveyed for the extent of the cemetery and this...

Expanding the Historical Plague Paradigm

When the first complete genomic sequence of Yersinia pestis was published on October 4, 2001 the world was naturally focused elsewhere, on anthrax bioterrorism -- the Amerithrax incident was then in its second week-- and the September 11 attacks were just over three weeks old. As the world redeveloped bioterrorism assessments and plans, plague was...

The Paleomicrobiology of Malaria Detection

Malaria is arguably one of the most influential infectious diseases in human history. Its been with us as long as we have been human, but as Teddi Setzer shows us in her recent review of detection methods, our abilities to find it in the past leaves a lot to be desired.The standard method of looking...

Historians Chronicling Plague Genetic Discoveries

After my last post critiquing Cohn's scientific interpretations, I think its only fair to write about all the historians who are actively engaging and incorporating scientific findings in their work. I've communicated with a lot of historians who are following the scientific work on the plague and I know there will be some articles and...

Academic Plague Identity Wars Continue

Just when you think the academic wars over the identity of the medieval plague are over, another volley is cast by Samuel Cohn. In the past I haven't mustered the energy to respond to his papers and books because there are just so many scientific misunderstandings, but its time to respond. Obviously, scientific studies that...

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....

Toward a Molecular History of Yersinia pestis (AHA)

This post a resource for the presentation I gave at the AHA meeting in New Orleans on January 5, 2013. A color handout of the slides can be downloaded here. This map will be continually updated as new finds are published. Some of the balloons mark sites with multiple studies. Click on the balloons for...

Remodeling the Plague Phylogenetic Tree

Understanding the molecular history of any organism requires fitting together ancient DNA with the phylogenetic tree constructed with living exemplars. Constructing a bacterial phylogenetic tree is a snapshot of a moving target because its impossible to sample all of the strains.  A recent study by the East Smithfield group ( Bos et al, 2012 [2])...

Siberian Mummy Yields 300-year-old Smallpox DNA

It was the mass grave that got their attention. Four bodies crammed into one casket, with one child outside but with the casket. Multiple graves are not common in Yakutia, Siberia. Examination of the late 17th to early 18th century mummies indicates that burial came quickly after death. The casket contains one adult male over...