ReviewScientific reports2018
A critical review of anthropological studies on skeletons from European plague pits of different epochs.
Review in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- New integrative methodology for the excavation and study of mass graves and partially commingled remains.PloS one · 2026Article
- A Heavy Issue: Changes in Body Size in London Before, During and After the Black Death.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Raman Spectroscopy Detects Bone Mineral Changes with Aging in Archaeological Human Lumbar Vertebrae from Thornton Abbey.Applied spectroscopy · 2025Article
- Dying of pestilence: Stature and mortality from the Black Death in 14th-century Kyrgyzstan.American journal of biological anthropology · 2024Article
- Differential pathogenicity and lethality of bubonic plague (1720-1945) by sex, age and place.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- An invasive Haemophilus influenzae serotype b infection in an Anglo-Saxon plague victim.Genome biology · 2022Article
- Bioarchaeological insights into the last plague of Imola (1630-1632).Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Mortality and demographic recovery in early post-black death epidemics: Role of recent emigrants in medieval Dijon.PloS one · 2020Article
- The Role of Indigenous Epidemic Folk Stories in Shaping Adaptive Disease-Related Behaviors in West Papua.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In historical times, plague epidemics intermittently ravaged Europe for more than 1,400 years, and still represent a threat in many countries all over the world. A debate is ongoing about the past plague, if it killed randomly in a population or discriminated among persons on the basis of their biological features. To address questions of plague lethality, we reviewed a large number of anthropological studies published in the last twenty years on victims of the past pestilences in Europe. In particular, we focused on data concerning demography (age at death and sex determination), and health status (skeletal biomarkers). We applied to these data a model system based on Multiple Linear Regression, which aimed to discern among possible predictors of sex-selective plague lethality in entire populations, in different periods and regions. Based on available data, we lack evidence for general trends of association between biological features. Differences in sex ratio are more likely due to the original population compositions or to distinct cultural behaviours of the two genders. We concluded that generalizations on biological evidence are not feasible for ancient plagues if we exclude that the infection possibly killed primarily persons between 5-10 and 20-35 years of age.
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Registered trials
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