Abstract
For a long time, researchers working on issues relating to infectious diseases of the past have regretted the absence of archaeological remains that would allow us to understand the attitude of past societies towards deaths caused by epidemics, other than through texts that are not very explicit. It's only since the 1980s and the development of preventive archaeology that funerary ensembles recognized as being linked to crises of an epidemic nature have become clearly tangible.
The application of archaeothanatological methods, which focus on understanding burial methods through the study of skeletons in their graves, has not only enabled the detection of abnormal mortality phenomena (e.g. the formation of so-called multiple burials), but has also revealed certain specificities of sepulchral treatment in epidemic contexts, as well as their diversity over time.
At the same time, constant advances in techniques for analyzing human remains have led to the development of a number of tools that shed light on the nature of mortality crises, and particularly the plague. Archaeological work was initially limited in scope, but as discoveries were made and different situations encountered, it gradually became possible to propose a comparative study integrating several sites built during Black Death epidemics.
Enriched by historical data, when the context lent itself to it, and those provided by paleobiology, they gradually led to a complete renewal of knowledge and issues concerning the manifestations and consequences of these epidemics on past societies.
