Evidence for catastrophe at the time of the Plague of Justinian on Bahrain: right time, different disaster

Abstract As argued for the Black Death, catastrophes are rarely unicausal and identifying them needs consideration of context. Scholars have focused on the Plague of Justinian, debating whether mass interments reflect its impact. We argue that, even when interments align chronologically, determining the nature of the crisis requires multiple lines of evidence. The DS3 moundfield on Bahrain is a multi-period site with 290 tombs. Recent radiocarbon dating of three tombs places them in the Sasanian period. Bayesian analysis suggests these tombs were used during the early years of the Justinianic plague. The tombs are anomalous. Multiple interments existed in this era, but these tombs have very large numbers of dead. A minimum of 149 people were in mound 73 (tomb 18) and 86 people in mound 83 (tomb 5) mainly non-adults. These are some of the largest collective interments linked to the Justinianic period. This paper tests whether these interments reflect a catastrophic event using dating, burial practices, demography and palaeopathology. We conclude that they represent catastrophic mortality during the pandemic’s onset, but they were not caused by Yersinia pestis. The findings reinforce the observation that multiple hazards create the conditions for pathogen spread, but they provide possibilities for more than one organism.