The Black Death (1347-1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, 'big data palaeoecology', which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death's mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death's mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.

Anthropocene Research Unit Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań Poland

ArchaeoBioCenter Ludwig Maximilians Universität München München Germany

Bolin Centre for Climate Research Stockholm University Stockholm Sweden

Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence CA USA

Centre for Climate Change Research Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń Poland

Centre for Theoretical Study Charles University and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Prague Czech Republic

Chair of Forest Growth and Dendroecology Institute of Forest Sciences Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg Freiburg Germany

Climate Change Ecology Research Unit Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań Poland

CNRS HNHP UMR 7194 Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle Institut de Paléontologie Humaine Paris France

CNRS Université Clermont Auvergne GEOLAB Clermont Ferrand France

Department of Agriculture and Forest Sciences University of Tuscia Viterbo Italy

Department of Archaeology University of Reading Reading UK

Department of Biology Georgetown University Washington DC USA

Department of Botany University of Granada Granada Spain

Department of Botany University of Innsbruck Innsbruck Austria

Department of Earth Science Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy

Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences University of Tuscia Viterbo Italy

Department of Environmental Biology Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy

Department of Environmental Geography GEODE UMR 5602 Jean Jaurès University Toulouse France

Department of Geography Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid Spain

Department of Geography University of Latvia Riga Latvia

Department of Geography University of Nevada Reno USA

Department of Geography Urban and Regional Planning Universidad de Cantabria Santander Spain

Department of Geology and Geoenvironment National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Athens Greece

Department of Geology Tallinn University of Technology Tallinn Estonia

Department of History Georgetown University Washington DC USA

Department of History Stockholm University Stockholm Sweden

Department of Palaeobiology Faculty of Biology University of Białystok Białystok Poland

Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science Lund University Lund Sweden

Department of Pre and Early History and West Asian Archaeology University of Heidelberg Heidelberg Germany

Department of Quaternary Research Institute of Geography Russian Academy of Science Moscow Russia

Environmental Archaeology Research Group Institute of History CSIC Madrid Spain

Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Faculty of Geography Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow Russia

Faculty of History and International Relations University of Bialystok Bialystok Poland

GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences Section Climate Dynamics and Landscape Evolution Potsdam Germany

IFP Energies Nouvelles Earth Sciences and Environmental Technologies Division Rueil Malmaison Rueil Malmaison France

Institute of Archaeology Faculty of History Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń Poland

Institute of Archeology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Prague Czech Republic

Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences University of Tartu Tartu Estonia

Institute of Geography University of Cologne Cologne Germany

Institute of Geological Sciences Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland

Institute of Geosciences University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany

Institute of History Jagiellonian University in Krakow Krakow Poland

Institute of Latvian History University of Latvia Riga Latvia

ISEM UMR 5554 Université Montpellier CNRS EPHE IRD Montpellier France

Laboratory of Forest Botany Geobotany School of Forestry and Natural Environment Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki Greece

Laboratory of Palaeoecology and Archaeobotany Department of Plant Ecology Faculty of Biology University of Gdańsk Gdańsk Poland

Laboratory of Palynology and Palaeobotany Department of Life Sciences University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Modena Italy

Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe Leipzig Germany

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Jena Germany

Museum of Archaeology University of Stavanger Stavanger Norway

Nature Research Centre Institute of Geology and Geography Vilnius Lithuania

Past Landscape Dynamics Laboratory Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland

School of Archaeology University of Oxford Oxford UK

School of Geography Earth and Environmental Science University of Plymouth Plymouth UK

School of Natural and Built Environment Queen's University Belfast Northern Ireland

Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Alnarp Sweden

Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study Uppsala Sweden

The Archaeologists National Historical Museums Lund Sweden

Viscum Pollenanalys and Miljöhistoria Nässjö Sweden

W Szafer Institute of Botany Polish Academy of Sciences Kraków Poland

Wessex Archaeology Portway House Salisbury UK

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Ten simple rules to bridge ecology and palaeoecology by publishing outside palaeoecological journals