The Plague

A few months ago, there was a fairly silly social media dust up over the “Plague of Justinian.” One group of scholars following largely textual sources felt confident enough to assert that the plague killed millions. The other group of scholars, leaning on archaeological evidence, struggled to produce similar receipts and questioned whether it would be possible for a plague of this magnitude to leave so little evidence. Because this debate was set against the stinging backdrop of the COVID pandemic, scholars who questioned the impact of the plague found themselves awkwardly aligned with folks who questioned the significance of COVID and practitioners of politicized pseudoscience. Those who supported the textual traditions, in contrast, took on the mantle of truth speakers. If it was not so absurd, it would have been (more) funny.

The problem persists. While no one is inclined to suggest that the plague didn’t happen, archaeologists point out that we don’t necessarily see the signs of social collapse that one might expect if the plague was the magnitude that some textual evidence implies. Moreover, the mid-6th to early-7th century appears to show continued economic vitality suggesting that the social and economic networks remained intact and functioning at least to the extent such things are visible to archaeology. 

The most vexing problem was that there were very few large scale burials, plague pits, or other manifestations of the plague in the material culture. The publication of “Bioarchaeological signatures during the Plague of Justinian (541–750 CE) in Jerash (ancient Gerasa), Jordan” in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2026) by Karen Hendrix, Swamy R. Adapa, Robert H. Tykot, Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, Andrea Vianello, Gloria C. Ferreira, Michael Decker, and Rays H.Y. Jiang. 

This article is significant because it published the remains of a plague burial over over 200 individuals under the collapsed cavea of the Gerasa amphitheater in Jordan. Bioarchaeological study of these burials revealed a single strain of Yersinia pestis indicating that this is “a synchronous epidemic event.” The presence of a coin with a likely date to the 7th century as well as evidence associated with the end of the use of the amphitheater as a light industrial site around 640 allows archaeologists to date the burials to around mid-7th century. In a wild find, the excavators discovered unfired “Jerash Bowls” in fills associated with the burials suggesting that the plague (or even burial) might have disrupted production at Gerasa. This is exactly the kind of discovery that many archaeologists had been waiting for and while it won’t put an end to discussions surrounding the scope and impact of the plague (and obviously 640 is much later than “Justinianic” in a narrow sense, but this is not a particular issue), it does indicate the kind of evidence that “a synchronous epidemic event” can produce.

The bioarchaeological analysis of the human remains in the burial also revealed some other interesting insights. For example, the individuals buried in the collapsed cavea seem to come from a fairly wide range of childhood hydrological backgrounds based on stable isotope analysis. In fact, the scholars who published this study have said that this burial produced “a level of heterogeneity unmatched in any other Levantine cemetery population.” This is very curious.

On the one hand, one wonders whether the Byzantine-Sassanian Wars of the early 7th century created displaced populations who found refuge in cities like Gerasa (and may have spread the plague). On the other hand, it may be that Gerasa had long hosted diverse populations that only an epidemic event brought together in a contemporary event. This is to suggest a tension between mobility and burial practices.

The authors point out that this mass burial (and the damage of the city by an earthquake a decade or so later) did not mark the end of the city which continued to show signs of urban vitality into the Islamic period. The work at Gerasa shows that the human impact of the epidemic need not have caused a similar (and more archaeologically visible) systemic impact. 

This kind of study doesn’t necessarily impact our work on Cyprus directly, although it would be helpful to understand whether the burial practices at Polis, for example, represent changing attitudes toward mortality prompted more by the prevalence of the Justinian plague as changes in religious orientation.