UK experts find London’s lost ‘Black Death’ graves
Print Edition
ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Britain said yesterday they had solved a 660-year-old mystery, citing DNA tests which they said proved they had found a lost burial site for tens of thousands of people killed in medieval London by the “Black Death” plague.
The breakthrough follows the discovery last year of 13 skeletons wrapped in shrouds laid out in neat rows during excavations for London’s new Crossrail rail line, Europe’s biggest infrastructure project.
Archaeologists, who say the find sheds new light on medieval England and its inhabitants, later found 12 more skeletons taking the total to 25. They will further excavate the site in July to see if more bodies are buried nearby.
Last year, they said the remains probably belonged to victims of the plague, which killed about a third of England’s population following its outbreak in 1348. Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in the cemetery in London’s Farringdon district, one of two emergency burial sites.
Yesterday, they said DNA testing of some of the skeletons’ teeth had uncovered traces of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which was responsible for the Black Death plague, confirming that theory.
“Analysis of the Crossrail find has revealed an extraordinary amount of information allowing us to solve a 660 year mystery,” said Jay Carver, Crossrail’s lead archaeologist.
“This discovery is a hugely important step forward in documenting and understanding Europe’s most devastating pandemic,” he added. “Until Crossrail’s discovery, archaeologists had been unable to confirm the story.”
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