Since I last wrote about Bavaria, the aDNA centers have been busy. With the accepted manuscript of the second new paper available this past week, its time for an update. The fourth paper on Aschheim not only confirmed the first three, but it also produced the first full genome of Yersinia pestis for the Plague of Justinian (Wagner et al, 2014). This paper also confirmed the Bavarian strain’s placement in the phylogeny of Y. pestis. The availability of the first full genome will primarily be important for comparison to newly discovered samples from elsewhere. Using newer technology, the newest paper refined some of the Aschheim sequences and produced a full genome of Y. pestis from a woman buried at Altenerding, about 20 km from Aschheim (Feldman et al, 2016). Radiocarbon dating from both sites places the epidemic in the mid-sixth century; it can not differentiate which specific epidemic ‘wave’. The Altenerding epidemic was from the same Y. pestis lineage as Aschheim proving that this was a regional epidemic, possibly the same epidemic event. The phylogeny for the first pandemic is still based on a single epidemic from one geographic region, so the time is not yet ripe to use the phylogeny to tell inform us on the transmission or route of the pandemic.

It is, however, time to start thinking a little more about the environment of these sites. They are both located on the Munich gravel plain, foreland (foothills) north of the Alps. Aschheim is located closer to the Alps at an elevation of 500 meters with Altenerding 20 km further north at a lower elevation in a small valley formed by a tributary of the River Isar. The Roman road running horizontally across the map runs west to Augsburg, the capital of the Roman province of Raetia Secunda and east to the city of Batavia, a colony in the province of Noricum. The road running by Altenerding would take traffic eventually north toward Regensburg (Casta Regina).

The large water feature is Speichersee lake with a man-made 20th-century reservoir used to power hydroelectric plants and serve some of the water needs of the Munich region. As far as I can tell, none of this would have been present in the Late Antique period. The River Isar is the green line to the west of both sites. Munich will later be founded where the road crosses the river from monastic land in about 1158. There was nothing special at the river crossing in the sixth century. Although the road crosses the river, there is no indication of a Roman bridge on the map.

Both Aschheim and Altenerding are located in what would have been the province of Raetia II. While they are along Roman roads, this would have been a rural area. Both Aschheim and Altenerding were sites of Roman villas and Dornach near Aschheim was a small settlement. How much of this would have been occupied and further developed (or not) after the Roman army left is unclear. The cemetery at Altenerding is triple the size of Aschheim. Yet, there is reason to think that Aschheim was hit harder by the plague and based on the carbon dates of graves with some molecular plague signal, probably more than once. Michael McCormick (2015:83) suggests that the Aschheim cemetery gathered graves from a dispersed settlement that probably had fewer than 70 people at any one time.

A living history museum in Munich area at Kirchheim has reconstructed typical buildings from the early medieval Merovingian period. Although this area was nominally under Merovingian Frankish hegemony there is little specifically Frankish about the archaeology. They were all wooden construction. Below is a picture of a sunken pit building, an ‘out building’ and a long house.

Continue to think of the Plague of Justinian in Constantinople and Pelusium, it was surely there. Just remember that most of its geographic spread may have looked more like this picture.

References:

Feldman, M., Harbeck, M., Keller, M., Spyrou, M. A., Rott, A., Trautmann, B., et al. (2016). A high-coverage Yersinia pestis Genome from a 6th-century Justinianic Plague Victim. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 1–31. [Accepted manuscript]

McCormick, M. (2015). Tracking mass death during the fall of Rome’s empire (I). Journal of Roman Archaeology, 28, 325–357.

Wagner, D. M., Klunk, J., Harbeck, M., Devault, A., Waglechner, N., Sahl, J. W., et al. (2014). Yersinia pestis and the Plague of Justinian 541–543 AD: a genomic analysis. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 14(4), 1–8. http://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70323-2