La paléoépidémiologie intégrative

Abstract

Infectious paleoepidemiology is a field of study that has received little attention in recent years. However, the restitution of infectious environments specific to ancient populations and the apprehension of infections’ impact on their health status are cornerstones of our knowledge of past societies. The aim of our research was to develop and implement a new approach to the study of infectious diseases in the past: integrative paleoepidemiology. This involves, for the same osteoarchaeological collection, combining the macroscopic paleoepidemiological study known as classical with an exhaustive microbiological approach, at the "population" scale. This paleomicrobiological approach constitutes a complementary angle of study to the census of bone lesions due to infections, observable on anthropobiological remains. It thus makes it possible to estimate infectious prevalences that are closer to the epidemiological reality of our corpus, by revealing the proportion of "silent" infections present in the samples but which do not lead to the expression of bone stigmas. The implementation of this approach for the study of four osteoarchaeological series from various chronogeographical contexts has demonstrated its potential in the context of research on infectious diseases in the past. Our results have demonstrated the presence of numerous infections among the individuals studied, some of which were unsuspected on the basis of classical paleopathological studies alone (syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, brucellosis, smallpox). Finally, given their obvious complementarity, the integration of paleopathology and paleomicrobiology within the same approach seems to us to be part of the future of the study of infectious and epidemic contexts of the past. This integrative approach could contribute to improve our understanding of infectious pathologies, and more generally of the pathocenosic contexts that burdened ancient populations.