Chasing the “White Plague” in the Barbaricum of the Carpathian Basin : A case with tuberculous meningitis discovered in a Sarmatian-period (2nd–3rd-century-CE) storage pit from the archaeological site of Kiskundorozsma–Daruhalom-dűlő II (Hungary)

Madai, Ágota and De Andrés Montero, Marcos and Kis, Luca and Szalontai, Csaba and Szigeti, Anna and Major, István and Kiss P., Attila and Spekker, Olga (2025) Chasing the “White Plague” in the Barbaricum of the Carpathian Basin : A case with tuberculous meningitis discovered in a Sarmatian-period (2nd–3rd-century-CE) storage pit from the archaeological site of Kiskundorozsma–Daruhalom-dűlő II (Hungary). TUBERCULOSIS, 152. No. 102632. ISSN 1472-9792

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Abstract

The aim of our paper is to demonstrate a case (KD429) with tuberculous meningitis (TBM) from the 2nd–3rd‒ century‒CE Carpathian Basin. The skeleton of KD429 was subject to a detailed macromorphological evaluation, focusing on the detection of pathological lesions likely related to tuberculosis (TB). It was the presence of endocranial alterations, especially the TB-specific granular impressions, based on which the diagnosis of TBM was established in KD429. Besides KD429, only eight cases with TB have been published from the Sarmatianperiod (1st–5th centuries CE) Carpathian Basin. Reports of archaeological cases with TB, like KD429, can provide invaluable information about the spatio-temporal distribution of the disease in the past. Nonetheless, to get a more accurate picture about the burden that TB may have put on the Sarmatians, the systematic macromorphological (re-)evaluation of their osteoarchaeological series would be advantageous. Interestingly, the skeleton of KD429 was unearthed from not a grave-pit but a storage pit from the archaeological site of Kiskundorozsma–Daruhalom-dul ˝ o ˝ II (Hungary). At the current state of research, the motive behind the exclusion of KD429 from the “normal” burial custom cannot be determined; therefore, it remains an open question whether their disease (TBM) played a role in it or not.

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