Molecular and morphological analyses to investigating infectious disease in Early Medieval Iberia
The main aim of this study is to shed a light on the disease burden in Early Medieval Iberia, during a time of radical demographic, social and economic changes. However, the dearth of written sources about diseases that commonly affected Iberian inhabitants makes this reconstruction extremely challenging. Thus, applying a multidisciplinary approach, we combined biological anthropology, paleopathology and genetics on five individuals out of 268 to identify the possible causative agents of the infectious lesions observed on their skeletal elements. We identified possible cases of malaria, tuberculosis and brucellosis, proposing diseases that could fit in the fever episodes described in Western European written sources from Early Medieval times.