The mass grave in the Schottenstift - an anthropological approach to an unknown urban burial pit of historic Vienna (Austria).

Nowadays, most lost and forgotten cemeteries and burial sites in Vienna are re-discovered by accident during the course of building works. This was the case at the Schottenstift in central Vienna, where in 2002 (during construction work in the courtyard of the monastery) a previously unknown burial site was discovered. The individuals were placed in ten tightly packed layers, suggesting this was a mass grave. At least 388 individuals and a small number of artifacts related to the clothing of the individuals were recovered, but the origin and date of the burial site remained unclear due to the lack of written sources. Thus, in 2017 an interdisciplinary project of the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Natural History Museum of Vienna (Anthropological Department), as well as the Forschungsgesellschaft Wiener Stadtarchäologie, and the Schottenstift Archive began, focusing on the reappraisal of the mass grave. In order to clarify the origin of the burial site, the project combined historical and archaeological research as well as modern bioarchaeological methods. Because the historical and archaeological analyses are still largely pending, this paper presents the results of the anthropological examination of a selected sample of 100 individuals. The analysis revealed that predominantly males and infants were present, all of which show skeletal evidence of poor health and living conditions. The lack of perimortem trauma, indicating an act of warfare or violence, suggests that an epidemic plague is the most reasonable cause for this mass interment. Although there is no direct written source within the Schottenstift Archive, the mass grave may be linked to the Great Plague of Vienna in 1678, confirmed with radiocarbon of skeletal and archaeological remains between 1650 and 1725 AD. Despite the limited sample size, the anthropological research within this project has enabled new insights in the socio-cultural background and the evolution of disease of the Early Modern Period, contributing to the urban development of Vienna, as it is known today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]