Archaeologists Examine the Enduring Human Costs of Epidemics
And What We Might Learn from Covid
A "plague pit" in London holds the skeletal remains of victims of the Black Plague, c. 1349 | Credit: Courtesy of UCSB
Epidemics and pandemics are not equal-opportunity killers. Seen through the archaeological record, incomplete as it may be, these waves of death victimized the marginalized and most vulnerable populations wherever they struck.
In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be no different, striking Indigenous, Black and Latinx communities at far greater rates than white populations.
“What’s going on today is nothing new,” said Lynn Gamble, a UC Santa Barbara professor emerita of anthropology and editor of the journal American Antiquity.
