Observing tuberculosis and brucellosis in the Austrian Avar population

The Avar people were a semi-nomadic population from medieval Eurasia who migrated from the Eastern Asian Steppes to Western European countries that are modernly known as Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Romania and Austria. The objectives of this research are to 1) understand the experience of tuberculosis and brucellosis in the Avar population from medieval Austria, 2) gain insight into related lifestyle and cultural practices that had an impact on population health, and 3) address the challenges of skeletal diagnosis between tuberculosis and brucellosis in the hopes of advancing methodology. It is hypothesized that 1) given the high transmission rates of tuberculosis and its confirmed presence in medieval Europe, a frequency of tuberculosis at 17% or greater would be expected in the medieval Avar population (Pedersen et al., 2019), 2) given the lower transmission rates of brucellosis than tuberculosis and its rare observation in archaeological contexts, a lower frequency of brucellosis in comparison to tuberculosis would be expected in the medieval Avar population (Bendrey et al., 2020; D’Anastasio et al., 2010), and 3) given that brucellosis is more common in populations with ties to husbandry and farming given its zoonotic origin, brucellosis is expected to be observed in this population (Fournie et al., 2017; McKeown, 2009; Moreno, 2014; Zuckerman et al., 2014). Data for the project was based on a visual osteological analysis complemented by radiographic and photographic images, as well as a Fisher’s exact test based on pathological scoring. Pathological scoring and biological profiles were completed on the skeletal remains of Avar individuals who are a part of the Bruckneudorf collection at the Naturhistorisches Museum and the Hirschstetten collection in the City Archaeology Department at the Museen der Stadt Wien in Vienna. Results suggest that there is a connection between animals, people, and the environment. The frequency of tuberculosis within the studied population being 35.58% and the frequency of brucellosis being nearly 7.40% could be attributed to different Avar lifestyle factors such as increased husbandry, unique utilization of horses in battle, increasing contacts with migration, nomadism to sedentarism, and even housing structures. Results suggest alignment with all three hypotheses. Concluding remarks found that the Fisher’s exact test used to determine frequency of tuberculosis would work best when paired with a proteomic or aDNA component to further strengthen both the claim for diagnosis and the validity of the model. Additionally, the use of the biocultural, multidisciplinary, and one health approaches should be implemented in further paleopathological research projects, and these guidelines need to be developed in a way that allows paleopathologists and bioarcheologists to address the osteological paradox in their framework.