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Detecting plague: palaeodemographic characterisation of a catastrophic death assemblage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2015

R.L. Gowland  and
A.T. Chamberlain
R.L. Gowland
Affiliation:
St John’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (Email: rlg31@cam.ac.uk)
A.T. Chamberlain
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
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Abstract

The archaeological definition of a plague should be possible from skeletal populations, because the age profile of a population afflicted by a catastrophe will be different to that of a community exposed to a more normal mortality. The authors show how this can be done using a Bayesian statistical analysis.

Keywords

Black DeathBayesian statisticsskeletal ageingmortality
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 79 , Issue 303 , March 2005 , pp. 146 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2005

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