Overview
- The team says this is the first suspected Black Death burial site in Europe identified through a systematic, targeted search rather than by chance.
- Geophysical measurements plus sediment coring revealed a 10-by-15-meter, roughly 3.5-meter-deep anomaly containing human bone fragments.
- Radiocarbon results date the fragments to the 14th century, matching chronicles that describe eleven large burial pits around Erfurt circa 1350.
- The findings are published in PLOS One, with excavation planned in coordination with the Thuringian heritage authority and genetic analyses at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Researchers stress that only in-situ excavation and ancient-DNA detection of Yersinia pestis can confirm a plague context, with other 14th-century mass-mortality causes still possible.