S. Duchesne

Variola Virus in a 300-Year-Old Siberian Mummy

This letter describes a distant lineage of the variola virus (the agent of smallpox) that was identified in a mummy found buried in the Siberian permafrost.

Procedures and Frequencies of Embalming and Heart Extractions in Modern Period in Brittany. Contribution to the Evolution of Ritual Funerary in Europe.

The evolution of funeral practices from the Middle Ages through the Modern era in Europe is generally seen as a process of secularization. The study, through imaging and autopsy, of two mummies, five lead urns containing hearts, and more than six hundred skeletons of nobles and clergymen from a Renaissance convent in Brittany has led us to reject this view. In addition to exceptional embalming, we observed instances in which hearts alone had been extracted, a phenomenon that had never before been described, and brains alone as well, and instances in which each spouses heart had been placed on the others coffin. In some identified cases we were able to establish links between the religious attitudes of given individuals and either ancient Medieval practices or more modern ones generated by the Council of Trent. All of these practices, which were a function of social status, were rooted in religion. They offer no evidence of secularization whatsoever.

Social status in late medieval and early modern Brittany: insights from stable isotope analysis

We document for the first time the diet of a privileged French population from Brittany, a region that was the center of battles between the Kingdoms of England and France until the end of the fifteenth century. We present here the results of stable isotope analyses of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur of human and animal bone and tooth collagen for a late medieval to early modern Breton population. The isotopic values observed for the Dominican convent of Rennes, Brittany, are very similar to those reported for medieval archaeological populations in Great Britain, namely they have enriched δ15N values combined with almost entirely terrestrial carbon signals. We discuss the consumption of young animals in a diet made up of terrestrial, marine, and freshwater resources. We report dietary differences between socio-economic groups and gender, with women and nobles (male and female) showing patterns consistent with high animal product consumption and lower mobility. The S isotope ratios of both humans and fauna are very homogeneous and generally have coastal δ34S values. The convent is known to have been an interregional pilgrimage site during the early modern period, but the isotope values indicate that the identified migrants were not pilgrims. Stable isotope analysis therefore complements the available historical information on human diets and mobility.

Relationships between clans and genetic kin explain cultural similarities over vast distances: the case of Yakutia

Archaeological studies sample ancient human populations one site at a time, often limited to a fraction of the regions and periods occupied by a given group. While this bias is known and discussed in the literature, few model populations span areas as large and unforgiving as the Yakuts of Eastern Siberia. We systematically surveyed 31,000 square kilometres in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and completed the archaeological study of 174 frozen graves, assembled between the 15th and the 19th century. We analysed genetic data (autosomal genotypes, Y-chromosome haplotypes and mitochondrial haplotypes) for all ancient subjects and confronted these to data on 190 modern subjects from the same area and the same population. Ancient familial links were identified between graves up to 1500 km apart, as well as paternal clans. We provide new insights on the origins of the contemporary Yakut population and demonstrate that cultural similarities in the past were linked to (i) the expansion of specific paternal clans, (ii) preferential marriage among the elites and (iii) funeral choices that could constitute a bias in any ancient population study.