Workers find likely plague burial pit from 14th century

Associated Press

LONDON

Workers digging a new railway line in London have uncovered what they believe is a burial ground containing victims of the Black Death — a plague that wiped out as much as half of London’s inhabitants when it swept the city in the mid-14th century.

Workers involved in the Crossrail project located 13 skeletons lying in two carefully laid-out rows on the edge of historic Charterhouse Square, an area where historical records suggest a burial ground was located. Project archaeologist Jay Carver said scientists will study the bones to establish cause of death, and they hope to map the DNA signature of the plague bacteria.

“This is a pretty rare find within London,” Carver said Friday. It is the latest in a string of unusual discoveries that have been a byproduct of the Crossrail project, which also has uncovered amber that is 55 million years old, bison and mammoth bones 68,000 years old, the remains of a large manor house surrounded by a moat dating to the 1500s and remains from Roman times.

At a time long before people moved quickly, the plague traveled fast. The bacillus spread via fleas on rats, cutting a swath through populations ignorant of its cause.

It began racing from Asia through Europe and North Africa in 1347, moving quickly among people who had no idea how to stop it. By 1348, it struck this island nation. Though estimates vary, it is thought to have killed roughly 75 million people worldwide in a four-year pandemic.

Among the millions killed were thousands of Londoners, though the exact number is unclear because record-keeping was so poor, said Roy Stephenson, the head of the Museum of London’s archaeological collections and archives.