CLIMATE CHANGE, MORTALIY CRISES, AND HEALTH IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND.

The 14^th-century Afro-Eurasian pandemic of plague, now often referred to as the Black Death, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. In England, it killed an estimated 30-60% of affected populations and emerged in the context of intense population pressures, increasing social inequality, increasing urbanization and changing global climatic conditions associated with the end of the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Thus, the prelude to and experience of the Black Death in England can provide a model for better understanding the confluence of urban environments, climate change, and emerging diseases. This paper presents analyses of skeletal data from people buried in several London cemeteries and who died before the Black Death emerged (c. 1000-1250 CE, n = 502) and specifically tests the hypothesis that health in general was on the decline prior to the Black Death in the context of climate change and subsistence crises, which might have implications for understanding why mortality during the Black Death was so extraordinarily high. The results of Kaplan-Meier survival indicate significant reductions in survivorship in the 13^th vs. 11^th-12^th centuries. Simultaneously, rates of developmental stress markers (linear enamel hypoplasia and short adult stature) increased in the 13th century. Overall, these results suggest a health declined prior to the Black Death in England. Given that selective mortality during famines before the Black Death might have produced surviving cohorts with relatively low average frailty, more work needs to be done to clarify the connections between pre-pandemic conditions and outcomes during the Black Death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]