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Past studies of medieval populations have often glossed over any heterogeneity that probably existed in that period, often depicting a majority ‘white’ society. While this may be true of more rural settings, urban ones, particularly in places like London which saw high levels of trade, would most likely have had a significant percentage of the population made up of migrants and visitors – some of whom may have come from as far away as Asia and Africa. In this month’s ‘Science Notes’, we examine a recent study that has set out both to identify some of this demographic diversity in the 14th century and to determine whether social conditions that these people may have experienced in life, such as structural racism, affected their health and ultimately their ability to survive the Black Death.
The presence of structural prejudice in historical populations is not something that we often consider, to our detriment in terms of understanding how such societies functioned. There is a surfeit of documents that attest to high levels of xenophobia in medieval society, from examples of the Flemish being targeted during the Peasants’ Revolt, and the many incidents of the persecution and genocide of Jews, to the subjugation of Irish and Welsh populations. Ideas of ‘English superiority’ were very much present in the medieval period – but how did they affect the lives of people who lived at this time? Modern studies show that similar cultural attitudes often result in poorer health outcomes for marginalised groups, as was most recently seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, with emerging evidence showing that Black communities in countries from the Global North comprised a disproportionate number of cases and deaths. It holds that similar patterns might have been at play in the past as well.
To help rebalance this picture, a team of bioarchaeologists and historians have examined 49 individuals from known plague cemeteries, and have compared them to 96 people who were buried either immediately prior to or after the Black Death struck London, and hence are likely to have died of other causes. All of the probable plague victims examined were buried at the site of the Royal Mint, just to the east of Tower Hill, which was excavated in the 1980s. Previous analysis of human remains from this site determined that they came from two separate burial locations and periods. The first was the cemetery of East Smithfield, which was an emergency burial ground that was specifically commissioned in anticipation of the first wave of plague reaching London, and was in use from AD 1348 to 1350. The second was the Cistercian abbey of St Mary Graces, which was in use from AD 1350 to 1538. Seven individuals from this cemetery were selected as examples of ‘non-plague’ individuals, while another 89 were chosen from the St Mary Spital cemetery located in the north of the city.
To determine the possible population affiliation of these individuals, the team examined their skulls, using morphological traits that are demonstrably heritable and linked with ecogeographical patterns of human variation. These traits included specific measurements of the nasal bones and eye orbits. The team is careful to emphasise that these traits are not diagnostic of ‘race’ but instead make it possible to estimate affiliation to a population through genetic decent. Using these criteria, the team identified six individuals among the probable plague victims with cranial morphologies most similar to Asian populations, nine to African ones, and 34 to white European samples. From the non-plague victims, 87 were similar to white European samples, one to Asian ones, and eight to African ones.
To analyse any potential differences in health between these individuals, they were then assessed using the Cox proportional hazards model – a statistical model used to evaluate the hazard of an event (in this case, death from plague). By comparing the possible Asian, African, and white European populations, the team found that there was a significantly higher proportion of people estimated to be of African or Asian descent in the plague burials compared to the non-plague ones. Specifically, a statistically significant difference was seen between the possibly African women and those of white European population affiliation, showing that the former group had a higher estimated hazard of dying of plague than white European women of the same age. While this is a small sample size, the statistical tests used were sensitive to this, and at the very least the results show a trend that is worth exploring in future areas of study.
This difference in susceptibility to plague, the team argue, is not a biological one, as race is a social classification, but instead one rooted in racism. They write, in a paper recently published in Bioarchaeology International (https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2022.0034), that ‘we emphasise here that variation by race in susceptibility to and hazard of dying from disease reflects the biological and psychosocial effects of racism, which was present in the medieval world.’ They argue that women from Africa were more likely to have been from poorer backgrounds and may have predominantly been employed as domestic servants. This type of labour has previously been shown to cause more respiratory problems and ill health – and perhaps ultimately affected their ability to survive the Black Death.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka
