This year marks the third year of excavations performed near an abandoned medieval church in Altopascio Italy. Giuseppe Vercellotti and a team of six archaeology students stumbled upon a layer of lime while digging in the land in July 2012. Lime is telltale sign of a mass grave; it was a medieval custom to dump lime on rotting corpses to muffle their stench. As we all know, mass graves were made to accommodate heavy death tolls often caused by epidemic disease outbreaks. The team assumed that this grave would contain solely victims of the Black Death, as indicated by the primitive use of lime. What they didn't know is that this mass grave had been used from the 11th century to the 19th century to dispose of bodies in the area afflicted by any and all epidemic diseases that have been prevalent in the past 1000 years. This is what they found:
- Victims of leprosy, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and typhus. These were presumably pilgrim travelers on religious journeys past the medieval church over the years.
- Many victims of the black plague, used by researchers to test the immunology (studying immune systems; seeing what people were most susceptible to/if other pathogens made them more susceptible to plague) of medieval citizens.
- Medieval jaws found lodged in the walls of the mass grave were used in DNA testing to harvest any Y. Pestis bacteria. This helps epidemiologists further examine the aspects of why the disease might have jumped from animals to humans at greater lengths.
- Possible victims of malaria, have been excavated but not yet tested.
- Several victims of syphilis. They could even tell the home remedies that the people had tried to use in hopes of treating it, ex: black enamel on teeth indicating mercury used as treatment.
- One victim of cholera in very good condition. Samples from this woman, termed "the lady with the gold earring" due to her hoop earring dating from the 1800s, will be used to examine Vibrio cholerae in greater depth and possibly find a path towards eradication.
The excavation is still in progress, however from this alone researchers and historians can gain great insight on our history with respect to epidemic disease. I chose this article because I think all of the diseases we've studied are mentioned in it, including evidence of some of the remedies we saw people using in vain. Most of all, the fact that they'd use the same mass grave for years and years (possibly unintentionally) is really amazing. Also, it's eye opening to see just how far technology is able to get us even when examining thousand-year-old samples of bacteria and/or DNA. Overall, this article was very interesting for both its historical and scientific aspects with regards to disease, and it will be interesting to follow how the rest of this investigation pans out as we approach the new year.
(article link: http://spark.sciencemag.org/the-thousand-year-graveyard)
Wow! I hadn't known about people using lime to cover the stench of dead bodies. Also, the black enamel on their teeth indicating that they mistakenly used mercury as a cure for syphilis is interesting because (assuming it was because of the four humors theory) people of the time used it to treat a variety of sicknesses. I visited the website where you found the article and there are some great pictures of the excavation in process.
ReplyDeleteA mass grave containing corpses from the 11th century to the 19th century sounds awesome to excavate! Just thinking of all the epidemics that have taken place between those centuries keeps me interested to read more. I find it amazing that over such a long period of time, researchers can still perform DNA tests to learn more about the diseases and how the immune systems responded to the virus or bacterium that caused a significant number of deaths. I never knew that lime could lessen the stench of decomposing bodies. I'd be interested to learn more about the age range found in the grave and exactly how many people were buried there.
ReplyDeleteI am interested to know when the syphilis victim was from. Perhaps it could lead to clues to determine once and for all weather the Europeans brought it over to the Americas during the Columbian exchange or if it was the other way around. Also, it is so strange how the same exact spot was used for so long, I wonder if it was a superstitious thing or just by accident.
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