Cemetery May Hold Victims of a 17th-Century Epidemic

MIŃSK MAZOWIECKI, POLAND—Science & Scholarship in Poland reports that more than 100 shallow burials in a “hastily prepared necropolis” were found in eastern Poland during road improvement work. Based upon coins found in some of the graves, the burials are thought to date to the seventeenth century. Cholera, which is spread through contaminated water and food, spreads easily during war and after natural disasters, and is suspected to be the cause of this epidemic. “We have found only a few artifacts in the graves, while generally there are considerably more in the necropolises from this period—such as clothing accessories, for example studs, buckles and pins,” said contract archaeologist Szymon Lenarczyk. “In this case, everything indicates that the dead were buried in the graves naked or in shrouds. The skeletons were buried without funerary objects.” Some of the graves contained more than one body, and some of the bodies may have been burned before burial in an attempt to prevent the spread of infection. For more, go to “A Parisian Plague.”