London Crossrail tunnel dig gives insight into Black Plague victims

A lot can be learned from a tooth. Molars taken from skeletons unearthed during work on a London railway line are revealing secrets of the medieval Black Death - and its victims.

Last week, Don Walker, an osteologist with the Museum of London, outlined the biography of one man whose bones were found by construction workers under London's Charterhouse Square. He was breast-fed as a baby, moved to London from another part of England, had bad tooth decay in childhood, grew up to work as a labourer, and died in early adulthood from the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century.

His life was nasty, brutish and short, but his after-life is long and illuminating.

"It's fantastic we can look in such detail at an individual who died 600 years ago," Walker said. "It's incredible, really."

The 25 skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a railway that's boring 21km of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for plague victims.

The location, outside the walls of the medieval city, matches historical accounts. The square, once home to a monastery, is one of the few spots in the city to stay undisturbed for centuries.

To test their theory, scientists took one tooth from each of 12 skeletons, then extracted DNA from the teeth. They announced yesterday that tests had found the presence of the plague bacterium in several of the teeth, meaning the individuals had been exposed to, and were likely to have died from, the plague.