Epidemie e archeologia funeraria

The intent of the contribution is to evaluate the relationship between pandemic and funerary evidence, as can be returned by archaeological and epigraphic documentation, with the aim of identifying diagnostic elements that can serve the recognition of burials determined by pandemic crises. The focus is on the so-called plague of Justinian, at the center of a lively discussion on the characteristics of that pandemic, its spread, and the real impact on the social, economic, and demographic context of the time; this debate is also significantly fueled by the results of paleogenetic analysis carried out in the last two decades on human remains that have been taken from early medieval necropolises.