East Smithfield Black Death cemetery summary
The Royal Mint medieval cemetery was situated at East Smithfield, E1. The Black Death cemetery was excavated in 1986-88 and covered approximately 2 ha in size. The cemetery was in use during 1348-1350 and was the first established Black Death cemetery in London (Grainger and Phillpotts in prep).
The burials were clustered in two areas. A total of 558 burials were excavated from the western cemetery; 300 individuals were uncovered from mass graves and a further 258 from single inhumation graves. The eastern cemetery revealed 192 individuals; 102 from mass graves and 90 individuals from single inhumations. It is estimated that approximately 40-50% of the cemetery is still in-situ below the Royal Mint’s courtyard (Grainger and Phillpotts in prep).
A total of 636 individuals from the two areas have been recorded onto the database.
Methodology
The recording of the East Smithfield Black Death cemetery deviates from the overall methodology.
Dental pathology was not recorded with the 0 and 9 option. Entries were only made when any pathological conditions were observed.
Joints were recorded when present. The four-digit array option for recording degenerative wear was not applied.
Certain non-metric traits were not recorded correctly and this section should therefore be used with caution.
It was evident that previous research on the collection had led to the removal of some skeletal remains with pathology, which has resulted in the pathological conditions recorded here to be of limited representative and interpretative value.
Preservation
The preservation of the material was good though skeletal completeness was poor for the subadults. A large proportion (24.8%) of the individuals could not be allocated an age category due to incompleteness.
Preservation | N= | % |
---|---|---|
Good | 424 | 66.7 |
Medium | 189 | 29.7 |
Poor | 23 | 3.6 |
Table 1 Skeletal preservation
Figure 1 Skeletal completeness (N=636)
Demography
The demographic profile for the Black Death individuals revealed 27.8% subadults and 72.2% adults. The age profile indicated that a majority of the adults died before the age of 35, whilst a majority of the sub adults died over the age of 5 years. This profile does not follow the traditional death curve for a medieval population, but reflect the profile of a living population and a typical death curve for a catastrophe cemetery (Chamberlain 2006).
Figure 2 Age distribution (N=636)
Age | N= | % |
---|---|---|
Perinatal | 5 | 0.8 |
1-6 month | 4 | 0.6 |
7-11 month | 2 | 0.3 |
1-5 years | 52 | 8.2 |
6-11 years | 61 | 9.6 |
12-17 years | 53 | 8.3 |
18-25 years | 63 | 9.9 |
26-35 years | 121 | 19.0 |
36-45 years | 97 | 15.3 |
>46 years | 22 | 3.5 |
Adult | 117 | 18.4 |
Sub adult | 39 | 6.1 |
Figure 3 Male and female distribution of adults (N=420)
All adults | % | Male | % | Female | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
18-25 years | 63 | 15.0 | 36 | 19.0 | 16 | 15.4 |
26-35 years | 121 | 28.8 | 68 | 36.0 | 38 | 36.5 |
36-45 years | 97 | 23.1 | 62 | 32.8 | 31 | 29.8 |
>46 years | 22 | 5.2 | 12 | 6.3 | 9 | 8.7 |
Unsexed Adults | 117 | 27.9 | 11 | 5.8 | 10 | 9.6 |
Total | 420 | 189 | 104 |
Stature
Sex | Avg_stat | SD | VAR | MIN | MAX | N |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Female | 160.6 | 5.5 | 30.7 | 151.1 | 179.0 | 30 |
Male | 167.6 | 6.0 | 36.6 | 153.3 | 180.1 | 61 |
Unsexed | 164.6 | 8.7 | 75.7 | 147.6 | 179.5 | 12 |
Pathology
Only a few pathological conditions were recorded in the skeletal assemblage. Most common were non-specific periositis and cribra orbitalia.Through previous analysis it is known that some pathological examples are no longer in the collection and therefore seriously limits the interpretative value of the pathological conditions noted.
The low prevalence rate of pathologies may, however, also be a reflection of the young age groups in the assemblage and the acute nature of their deaths. The rate of osteoarthritis was noticeably low for a medieval population.
East Smithfield Black Death pathology table (Word 125kb)
Vertebral pathology
The low rate of osteoarthritis was also noted in the vertebrae whilst ostepohytosis and Schmorl’s nodes wre relatively high with males apparently affected more than females (Table 5).
All adults | Male | Female | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
N | n | % | N | n | % | N | n | % | |
Osteoarthritis | 139 | 15 | 10.8 | 70 | 7 | 10.0 | 62 | 7 | 11.3 |
Osteophytosis | 139 | 94 | 67.6 | 70 | 50 | 71.4 | 62 | 41 | 66.1 |
IVD | 139 | 51 | 36.7 | 70 | 26 | 37.1 | 62 | 23 | 37.1 |
Schmorl's nodes | 139 | 60 | 43.2 | 70 | 39 | 55.7 | 62 | 18 | 29.0 |
Fusion | 139 | 9 | 6.5 | 70 | 5 | 7.1 | 62 | 4 | 6.5 |
Dental pathology
The crude table provided here (Table 6) suggests that the rate of dental enamel hypoplasia was relatively high in the Black Death population compared to the individuals recovered from St Mary Graces, perhaps suggesting a large proportion of the relatively young adults in this cemetery were exposed to the Great famine (1313-1317) during early childhood.
Caries | Calculus | Hypoplasia | Periodontitis | Periapical lesions | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
N | n | % | N | n | % | N | n | % | N | n | % | N | n | % | |
Male | 141 | 89 | 63.1 | 141 | 136 | 96.5 | 141 | 112 | 79.4 | 136 | 85 | 62.5 | 136 | 33 | 24.3 |
Female | 70 | 46 | 65.7 | 70 | 67 | 95.7 | 70 | 57 | 81.4 | 70 | 45 | 64.3 | 70 | 17 | 24.3 |
All adults | 245 | 149 | 60.8 | 245 | 232 | 94.7 | 245 | 193 | 78.8 | 237 | 144 | 60.8 | 237 | 52 | 21.9 |
Sub adults | 108 | 21 | 19.4 | 108 | 54 | 50.0 | 108 | 38 | 35.2 | 98 | 5 | 5.1 | 98 | 2 | 2.0 |
Discussion
The mass graves of the Black Death cemetery have been very closely dated to 1348-1350 during some of the most challenging years of the medieval period. Exposure to famine, war and epidemics was not uncommon. The demographic profile of the dead population reflects that of a living one, suggesting that there was an indiscriminate cross section of the population who died during the Black Death.
Site location
Royal Mint, East Smithfield, E1
Sitecode MIN86
Recorded by: Bekvalac J, Cowal L, Mikulski R and Kausmally T
Text by: Kausmally T
Last updated: 28 March 2007