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Of course, if we were really bright, we'd investigate all possible deposits of 'plague' periods in detail, looking for black rats and plague fleas. The latter have never been found (though of course other fleas can transmit plague, though less efficiently today - but who knows whether they did it better in the past?). However we haven't really looked properly at deposits from relevant periods. Bits of human and plague fleas are rather similar, so we are talking about serious microsope work, not casual glances in evaluations. Human fleas are common in archaeological deposits, and some other rat fleas have been found, so we'd expect to find a few Xenopsyllus from intensive plague episodes if we studied a few hundred samples and not just half a dozen, as occurs in current evaluations. Are there any waterlogged plague pits? That would be an obvious starting point, but ordinary floor and pit deposits can give plenty of fleas.
 
Harry Kenward.
 
 

Department of Archaeology,
University of York,
The King's Manor,
York YO1 7EP
UK.

Telephone: 01904 433905
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Harry Kenward.










 

-----Original Message-----
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greg Campbell
Sent: 26 April 2007 11:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ZOOARCH] Rattus rattus: an induced rarity?

Fellow ZooArchers:  in considering the archaeological evidence for black rats as a vector for disease (Black Death specifically), we all seem to be keeping our lips primly pursed about two serious issues:
 
1.  retrieval methods usually employed in British (even European) historical archaeology (and even in later prehistory) would seldom recover remains of this animal, or others of similar size and rarity
 
2.  this animal and others of similar size and rarity are seldom reported in publications, because of the perceived need for hundreds of pictures of marginal variations in broken crockery and pages of unreadable and unread stratigraphic descriptions.
 
So the apparent rarity in the record of Rattus rattus and similar sized vertebrates is induced by archaeological method.  Pity us who work with invertebrates!
 
Okay, I am playing Devil's Advocate, and there are many (and increasing) numbers of good practice and good publication.  However, we are hampered from employing ecological principles to answer wider archaeological questions (especially inter-site and inter-regional comparisons) because of inconsistent retrieval methods and publication bias. 
 
Archaeology is better than history at understanding the ordinary lives of ordinary folk precisely and only because its data is much less biased.  And 'Archaeology is human ecology', even when Tudors wore the English crown.
 
And there is the cat out of the bag.
 
Greg Campbell