Digging up the plague: A diachronic comparison of aDNA confirmed plague burials and associated burial customs in Germany.

Plague outbreaks in the past are mainly known from written sources; in particular, the Justinianic Plague of the Early Middle Ages and the Black Death of the Late Middle Ages have been described in vivid detail. Yet prior to the introduction of aDNA analysis, it was often quite difficult to associate burials with plague beyond doubt - especially in areas where written evidence of the plague is scarce. As analysis of ancient DNA now allows the detection of plague victims in the archaeological record, new ways are being developed for combining archaeological, historical and ancient DNA research. In this paper we would like to present and compare known examples of plague graves from the Early Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Thirty Years’ War in Germany that have also been confirmed by ancient DNA analyses. We would like to argue for a differentiated view of the burial customs, especially when more than one plague victim shared a grave, and would like to show possible conclusions, drawn from the aDNA-confirmed plague burials, that can indicate the different strategies adopted by ancient societies to deal with catastrophic events like a pandemic disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]