A New Definition of the Black Death: Genetic Findings and Historical Interpretations
Journal: De Medio Aevo
Year: 2022

The field of infectious disease history has been transformed in the past decade in large part because of fortuitous developments in several adjacent fields, most importantly genetics. The medieval period (ca. 500 to ca. 1500) has proved particularly important for these developments, not simply because it is now the earliest period from which whole genomes of several bacterial and viral pathogens have been retrieved, but also because the narratives that can be constructed about disease emergence