Department of Anthropology, National Museum, Praha 1, Czech Republic.
Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Praha 2, Czech Republic.
Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Sep;185(1):e25002. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.25002. Epub 2024 Jul 21.
Justinian plague and its subsequent outbreaks were major events influencing Early Medieval Europe. One of the affected communities was the population of Saint-Doulchard in France, where plague victim burials were concentrated in a cemetery enclosure ditch. This study aimed to obtain more information about their life-histories using the tools of isotope analysis.
Dietary analysis using carbon and nitrogen isotopes was conducted on 97 individuals buried at Le Pressoir in Saint-Doulchard, with 36 of those originating from the enclosure ditch. This sample set includes all individuals analyzed for plague DNA in a previous study. Mobility analysis using strontium isotope analysis supplements the dietary study, with 47 analyzed humans. The results are supported by a reference sample set of 31 animal specimens for dietary analysis and 9 for mobility analysis.
The dietary analysis results showed significantly different dietary behavior in individuals from the ditch burials, with better access to higher quality foods richer in animal protein. Sr/Sr ratios are similar for both studied groups and indicate a shared or similar area of origin.
The results suggest that the ditch burials contain an urban population from the nearby city of Bourges, which overall had a better diet than the rural population from Saint-Doulchard. It is implied that city's population might have been subjected to high mortality rates during the plague outbreak(s), which led to their interment in nearby rural cemeteries.
查士丁尼瘟疫及其后续爆发是影响中世纪早期欧洲的重大事件之一。受影响的社区之一是法国圣杜尔夏尔（Saint-Doulchard）的居民，瘟疫受害者的埋葬集中在一个墓地围墙沟中。本研究旨在使用同位素分析工具获取有关其生活史的更多信息。
对圣杜尔夏尔（Saint-Doulchard）Le Pressoir 墓地里的 97 人进行了碳氮同位素饮食分析，其中 36 人来自围墙沟。该样本集包括之前一项研究中分析过瘟疫 DNA 的所有个体。利用锶同位素分析进行的迁移分析补充了饮食研究，共分析了 47 名人类。结果得到了 31 个动物标本饮食分析和 9 个动物标本迁移分析的参考样本集的支持。
饮食分析结果表明，沟中埋葬的个体具有明显不同的饮食行为，能够更好地获得高质量的富含动物蛋白质的食物。两个研究组的 Sr/Sr 比值相似，表明它们来自共同或相似的起源地。
结果表明，沟中埋葬的个体来自附近的布尔日（ Bourges ）市，他们的饮食总体上比来自圣杜尔夏尔（ Saint-Doulchard ）的农村人口更好。这表明城市人口可能在瘟疫爆发期间遭受了高死亡率，导致他们被埋葬在附近的农村墓地。
