Mass graves of plague and decapitation victims from late medieval and early modern cemetery in Gdansk, Poland.

In the mid-fourteenth century a cemetery for the burial of the destitute, pilgrims and non-citizens of Gdansk, Poland, was founded beyond the city walls. During epidemics, the local urban population was buried there in mass graves. Excavations in Gdansk led to the discovery of four mass graves, the largest of which contained the remains of 759 people who were probably killed by the same plague. In addition to being used as a plague cemetery, this site also served as a burial ground for criminals. Following a single mass execution, 41 decapitated bodies were interred in a mass grave dated to the fifteenth century. The skulls of these individuals were not found during excavation. Skeletal analysis suggests that the executions may have been performed using a mechanical device: a guillotine.

Analysis of maternal lineage structure of individuals from chamber graves placed in medieval cemetery in Kaldus, Central Poland.

The beginning of the early Middle Ages period in Poland (10th-14th century) has been widely debated in the context of an active demographic inflow from other countries and its contribution to the creation of the new country. Finding chamber graves which are considered typical for the Scandinavian ethnic group in a few cemeteries in Poland has become the basis for the anthropological inference on the potential participation of North European people in forming the social elite of medieval Poland. However, the question of whether this fact was the result of presence of people from other countries lacks an unambiguous answer. We attempted to isolate ancient DNA from the medieval necropolis in Kaldus where several chamber graves have been found and analysed the genetic diversity of maternal lineage of this population. We analysed the HVR I fragment and coding regions to assess the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. We have identified a few relatively rare haplogroups (A2, T2b4a, HV, K1a11, J2b1a, and X2) which were previously found in early medieval sites in Norway and Denmark. Obtained results might suggest genetic relation between the people of Kaldus and past northern Europe populations. Present and further research can undoubtedly shed new light on the aspect of the formation of the early medieval Polish population.

Ancient DNA analysis might suggest external origin of individuals from chamber graves placed in medieval cemetery in Pien, Central Poland.

ABSTRACT: The participation of immigrants during early days in Poland of Piast's dynasty is a debated issue among archaeologists and anthropologists alike. Such hypotheses were formulated on the basis of, amongst others, the discovery of early medieval chamber graves characterized by construction features typical of the Scandinavian culture area. Archaeological and anthropological studies to date have not provided an unequivocal answer as to whether the individuals interred in those graves were autochthons who adopted a different burial rite, or perhaps immigrants from foreign lands. To characterize the gene pool of this population we analyzed the C/T allele of the nuclear gene LCT-13910 as well as fragments of the mitochondrial genome from individuals buried in very richly furnished chamber graves at the medieval cemetery in Pien. The obtained results for the nuclear allele and mtDNA do not corroborate the Scandinavian origin of the analyzed population. Moreover, we did not find haplogroup I, which is the one typical of populations that historically inhabited the north of Europe; and the frequency of the LCT-13910 T allele was similar to that of past and present Polish populations. On the other hand, we identified the atypical haplogroup C5c1, which suggests Asian origin of the studied individuals and confirms our previous reports concerning ancient human migrations from Asia to the territory of present-day Poland. While our findings do not conclusively disprove a Scandinavian lineage of the studied population, they certainly shed some new light on the origin of the individuals buried in chamber graves, which may be very different from the one initially proposed by archaeologists.

Socioeconomic differences in child mortality in central Poland at the end of the nineteenth century.

Analyses of historical or modern populations indicate a strong relationship between mortality level and standard of living, measured, among other factors, by degree of urbanization. The aim of this study was to assess mortality rates in children of up to 5 years of age in two populations living under different conditions in central modern Poland at the end of the 19th century: the rural parish of Kowal, under Russian partition, and Torun, an industrial and urbanized centre under Prussian partition. Data on births and deaths were taken from birth certificate registries and from the Prussian statistics yearbooks for 1876-1894. Death rates of children aged 0-5 years were calculated, and also for annual age ranges. The urban population had lower birth rates (37.19‰), natural increase rates (8.0‰), population dynamics rates (1.26‰), which provide information about the relation between two components of a natural increase, i.e. births and deaths, and an over-mortality of boys in relation to girls. In the rural population these values were all higher: 53.67‰, 18.11‰ and 1.59‰ respectively. No impact was found of social stratification on child mortality in the wide age group of 0-5 years. However, for subsequent one-year age groups significant relationships between mortality level and size and industrialization level of the population centres were noted. The living conditions of infants in Torun, although being in a better position as an area annexed by Prussia, were markedly worse than those of rural Kowal Parish. In the urban centre infant mortality was slightly over 269 for 1000 live born, and in Kowal Parish it was 163 for 1000 live born. The high infant mortality was balanced in Torun by the higher mortality levels of children aged 2-5 years compared with Kowal Parish. Natural selection in the city had the greatest impact on infants, who did not have the protective influence of breast-feeding because women had to return to work shortly after giving birth. The lower infant mortality of mothers in the countryside due to longer breast-feeding led to larger family sizes. In 1871-1890 in the villages the number of children per women was about 7.42, whereas in Torun it ranged from 4.4 to 5.2. The probability of death among children who survived the first year of life was higher in the countryside than the town. In the rural parish, perhaps because of cultural factors such as breast-feeding or working practices making full-time baby-sitting possible, children who did not reach the age of 1 year were not subjected to such intensive natural selection. Overall, differences in child mortality in the two centres in 19th central Poland resulted from ecological and cultural conditions, rather than from social and economical reasons (living under different partitions).