Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.

It is estimated that the largest cities in Western Europe in 1330 were Paris and Granada. At this time, Paris was the seat of power in northern France, while Granada had become the largest multicultural city in southern Spain, controlled by the Muslim, Nasrid Kingdom during Spain's Reconquista period. The next three largest cities were Venice, Genoa and Milan, all in northern Italy, renowned as important trading cities during the middle ages. In October 1347, the first wave of the Black Death had arrived in Sicily and then began spreading throughout Europe, decimating the population.

During the Medieval period, the Italian state of Venice grew into one of the most powerful empires in the Mediterranean. Its merchants, most famously Marco Polo, were some of the most important importers of exotic goods into Europe via their trade connections through the Black Sea and along the Silk Road. The city itself was among the most populous in Europe from the 12th to 16th centuries, its territories in the Italian mainland (terraferma) grew in the early 1400s, as well as its control over much of the Adriatic coast in the Balkans. By the mid-16th century, the population of the Venetian Republic was roughly 2.3 million people, at a time when Europe's population was around 70 million. 1.7 million of this population was concentrated in northeast Italy, while the islands of Crete and Cyprus were the most populous overseas territories.

Data on Early Medieval population growth in Western and Southern Germany, based on the number of cemeteries and on the number of archaeologically dated graves.

Throughout the early modern period, the largest city in Italy was Naples. The middle ages saw many metropolitan areas along the Mediterranean grow to become the largest in Europe, as they developed into meeting ports for merchants travelling between the three continents. Italy, throughout this time, was not a unified country, but rather a collection of smaller states that had many cultural similarities, and political control of these cities regularly shifted over the given period. Across this time, the population of each city generally grew between each century, but a series of plague outbreaks in the 1600s devastated the populations of Italy's metropolitan areas, which can be observed here. Naples At the beginning of the 1500s, the Kingdom of Naples was taken under the control of the Spanish crown, where its capital grew to become the largest city in the newly-expanding Spanish Empire. Prosperity then grew in the 16th and 17th centuries, before the city's international importance declined in the 18th century. There is also a noticeable dip in Naples' population size between 1600 and 1700, due to an outbreak of plague in 1656 that almost halved the population. Today, Naples is just the third largest city in Italy, behind Rome and Milan. Rome Over 2,000 years ago, Rome became the first city in the world to have a population of more than one million people, and in 2021, it was Italy's largest city with a population of 2.8 million; however it did go through a period of great decline in the middle ages. After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476CE, Rome's population dropped rapidly, below 100,000 inhabitants in 500CE. 1,000 years later, Rome was an important city in Europe as it was the seat of the Catholic Church, and it had a powerful banking sector, but its population was just 55,000 people as it did not have the same appeal for merchants or migrants held by the other port cities. A series of reforms by the Papacy in the late-1500s then saw significant improvements to infrastructure, housing, and sanitation, and living standards rose greatly. Over the following centuries, the Papacy consolidated its power in the center of the Italian peninsula, which brought stability to the region, and the city of Rome became a cultural center. Across this period, Rome's population grew almost three times larger, which was the highest level of growth of these cities.

rCRS refers to the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence and CR refers to the mtDNA coding region.MtDNA haplogroups identified in Medieval populations.

This thematic map of coroplets represents the demographic indicator Population. Average age, for the territorial delimitation of mesh of 250m of the Canary Islands, from the Municipal Register of Inhabitants (PMH) to this date.

In the period between 400 to 800 AD, also known as the period of the Barbarian invasions, intense migration is documented in the historical record of Europe. However, little is known about the demographic impact of these historical movements, potentially ranging from negligible to substantial. As a pilot study in a broader project on Medieval Europe, we sampled 102 specimens from 5 burial sites in Northwestern Italy, archaeologically classified as belonging to Lombards or Longobards, a Germanic people ruling over a vast section of the Italian peninsula from 568 to 774. We successfully amplified and typed the mitochondrial hypervariable region I (HVR-I) of 28 individuals. Comparisons of genetic diversity with other ancient populations and haplotype networks did not suggest that these samples are heterogeneous, and hence allowed us to jointly compare them with three isolated contemporary populations, and with a modern sample of a large city, representing a control for the effects of recent immigration. We then generated by serial coalescent simulations 16 millions of genealogies, contrasting a model of genealogical continuity with one in which the contemporary samples are genealogically independent from the medieval sample. Analyses by Approximate Bayesian Computation showed that the latter model fits the data in most cases, with one exception, Trino Vercellese, in which the evidence was compatible with persistence up to the present time of genetic features observed among this early medieval population. We conclude that it is possible, in general, to detect evidence of genealogical ties between medieval and specific modern populations. However, only seldom did mitochondrial DNA data allow us to reject with confidence either model tested, which indicates that broader analyses, based on larger assemblages of samples and genetic markers, are needed to understand in detail the effects of medieval migration.

It is only in the past two centuries where demographics and the development of human populations has emerged as a subject in its own right, as industrialization and improvements in medicine gave way to exponential growth of the world's population. There are very few known demographic studies conducted before the 1800s, which means that modern scholars have had to use a variety of documents from centuries gone by, along with archeological and anthropological studies, to try and gain a better understanding of the world's demographic development. Genealogical records One such method is the study of genealogical records from the past; luckily, there are many genealogies relating to European families that date back as far as medieval times. Unfortunately, however, all of these studies relate to families in the upper and elite classes; this is not entirely representative of the overall population as these families had a much higher standard of living and were less susceptible to famine or malnutrition than the average person (although elites were more likely to die during times of war). Nonetheless, there is much to be learned from this data. Impact of the Black Death In the centuries between 1200 and 1745, English male aristocrats who made it to their 21st birthday were generally expected to live to an age between 62 and 72 years old. The only century where life expectancy among this group was much lower was in the 1300s, where the Black Death caused life expectancy among adult English noblemen to drop to just 45 years. Experts assume that the pre-plague population of England was somewhere between four and seven million people in the thirteenth century, and just two million in the fourteenth century, meaning that Britain lost at least half of its population due to the plague. Although the plague only peaked in England for approximately eighteen months, between 1348 and 1350, it devastated the entire population, and further outbreaks in the following decades caused life expectancy in the decade to drop further. The bubonic plague did return to England sporadically until the mid-seventeenth century, although life expectancy among English male aristocrats rose again in the centuries following the worst outbreak, and even peaked at more than 71 years in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Social and cultural factors had a critical role in determining the genetic structure of Europe. Therefore, socially stratified populations may help to focus on specific episodes of European demographic history. In this study, we use uniparental markers to analyse the genetic structure of Partecipanza in San Giovanni in Persiceto (Northern Italy), a peculiar institution whose origins date back to the Middle Ages and whose members form the patrilineal descent of a group of founder families. From a maternal point of view (mtDNA), Partecipanza is genetically homogeneous with the rest of the population. However, we observed a significant differentiation for Y-chromosomes. In addition, by comparing 17 Y-STR profiles with deep-rooted paternal pedigrees, we estimated a Y-STR mutation rate equal to 3.90 * 10−3 mutations per STR per generation and an average generation duration time of 33.38 years. When we used these values for tentative dating, we estimated 1300-600 years ago for the origins of the Partecipanza. These results, together with a peculiar Y-chromosomal composition and historical evidence, suggest that Germanic populations (Lombards in particular) settled in the area during the Migration Period (400–800 AD, approximately) and may have had an important role in the foundation of this community.

The world's Jewish population has had a complex and tumultuous history over the past millennia, regularly dealing with persecution, pogroms, and even genocide. The legacy of expulsion and persecution of Jews, including bans on land ownership, meant that Jewish communities disproportionately lived in urban areas, working as artisans or traders, and often lived in their own settlements separate to the rest of the urban population. This separation contributed to the impression that events such as pandemics, famines, or economic shocks did not affect Jews as much as other populations, and such factors came to form the basis of the mistrust and stereotypes of wealth (characterized as greed) that have made up anti-Semitic rhetoric for centuries. Development since the Middle Ages The concentration of Jewish populations across the world has shifted across different centuries. In the Middle Ages, the largest Jewish populations were found in Palestine and the wider Levant region, with other sizeable populations in present-day France, Italy, and Spain. Later, however, the Jewish disapora became increasingly concentrated in Eastern Europe after waves of pogroms in the west saw Jewish communities move eastward. Poland in particular was often considered a refuge for Jews from the late-Middle Ages until the 18th century, when it was then partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and persecution increased. Push factors such as major pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 19th century and growing oppression in the west during the interwar period then saw many Jews migrate to the United States in search of opportunity.

This thematic map of coroplets represents the demographic indicator Population. Average age, for the territorial delimitation of large regions of the Canary Islands, from the Municipal Register of Inhabitants (PMH) to this date.

Background: Habitat fragmentation has accelerated within the last century, but may have been ongoing over longer time scales. We analyzed the timing and genetic consequences of fragmentation in two isolated lake-dwelling brown trout populations. They are from the same river system (the Gudenå River, Denmark) and have been isolated from downstream anadromous trout by dams established ca. 600-800 years ago. For reference, we included ten other anadromous populations and two hatchery strains. Based on analysis of 44 microsatellite loci we investigated if the lake populations have been naturally genetically differentiated from anadromous trout for thousands of years, or have diverged recently due to the establishment of dams. Results: Divergence time estimates were based on 1) Approximate Bayesian Computation and 2) a coalescent-based isolation-with-gene-flow model. Both methods suggested divergence times ca. 600-800 years bp, providing strong evidence for establishment of dams in the Medieval as the factor causing divergence. Bayesian cluster analysis showed influence of stocked trout in several reference populations, but not in the focal lake and anadromous populations. Estimates of effective population size using a linkage disequilibrium method ranged from 244 to > 1,000 in all but one anadromous population, but were lower (153 and 252) in the lake populations. Conclusions: We show that genetic divergence of lake-dwelling trout in two Danish lakes reflects establishment of water mills and impassable dams ca. 600-800 years ago rather than a natural genetic population structure. Although effective population sizes of the two lake populations are not critically low they may ultimately limit response to selection and thereby future adaptation. Our results demonstrate that populations may have been affected by anthropogenic disturbance over longer time scales than normally assumed.

It is estimated that the cities of Cordova (modern-day Córdoba) and Palermo were the largest cities in Europe in 1050, and had between fifteen and twenty times the population of most other entries in this graph, Despite this the cities of Cordova (the capital city of the Umayyad caliphate, who controlled much of the Iberian peninsula from the seventh to eleventh centuries), and Palermo (another Arab-controlled capital in Southern Europe) were still the only cities in Western Europe with a population over one hundred thousand people, closely followed by Seville. It is also noteworthy to point out that the five largest cities on this list were importing trading cities, in modern day Spain or Italy, although the largest cities become more northern and western European in later lists (1200, 1330, 1500, 1650 and 1800). In 1050, todays largest Western European cities, London and Paris, had just twenty-five and twenty thousand inhabitants respectively.

The period of European history (and much of world history) between 500 and 1500 is today known as the 'Dark Ages'. Although the term 'Dark Ages' was originally applied to the lack of literature and arts, it has since been applied to the lack or scarcity of recorded information from this time. Because of these limitations, much information about this time is still being debated today.

Additional file 2: Table S4. Result table of the SNP effect analysis.

Additional file 3: Table S5. SNP distance matrix.

This thematic map of coroplets represents the demographic indicator Population. Average age, for the territorial delimitation of municipalities of the Canary Islands, from the Municipal Register of Inhabitants (PMH) to this date.

Position, site id, label, name, type, and chronological occupation of the archaeological record discussed in this article (see Fig 1 for geographic location).

This dataset was compiled for the master's thesis "Familiar Feet. Kinship analysis using foot anomalies in the cemetery of Middenbeemster (Netherlands, 17th to 19th century)" at Leiden University (Netherlands) by the author. The thesis was submitted on June 15th, 2021 (https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3204807). The data was collected in the period from January to May 2021 at the Laboratory of Human Osteoarchaeology at Leiden University.

It includes the data of 380 adult individuals from four different post-medieval, Dutch populations: the rural population of Middenbeemster (MB) (Hakvoort 2013) and the urban populations of Eindhoven (Catharinakerk) (EH) (Arts 2013), Zwolle (Broerenkerk) (ZW) (Clevis and Constandse-Westermann 1992) and Arnhem (Eusebiuskerk) (AR) (Baetsen et al. 2018). For every individual, an estimate of sex and age-at-death was collected. If a DNA analysis was performed, then this result was used instead of an estimation. The sex estimations of the individuals were based on pelvic and cranial morphology (Bainbridge & Genoves Tarazaga, 1956; Bass, 1987; Buikstra & Ubelaker, 1997; Maat & Mastwijk, 2009; McCormick et al., 1991; Phenice, 1969; Stewart, 1979; Steyn & Işcan, 1999; Workshop for European Anthropologists (WEA), 1980) and were supported by archival data. For the Eindhoven collection, the DNA-determined sex estimations took precedence over the estimations by traditional bioarchaeological techniques (Baetsen & Weterings-Korthorst, 2013). The used abbreviations are M = male, PM = probable male, I = indeterminate, PF = probable female, F = female. Age-at-death estimations were made according to traditional bioarchaeological techniques (Brooks & Suchey, 1990; Buckberry & Chamberlain, 2002; İşcan et al., 1984, 1985; Lovejoy et al., 1985; Maat, 2001; Meindle & Lovejoy, 1985; Todd, 1920). The used abbreviations are EYA = early young adult, LYA = late young adult, MA = middle adult, OA = old adult.

The foot anomalies included are accessory navicular (AccessNav), brachydactyly D (BrachyD), brachydactyly of the first metatarsal (BrachyMT1), brachydactyly of the fourth metatarsal (BrachyMT4), brachydactyly of the first proximal phalanx (BrachyPP1), calcaneocuboid coalition (CalcCubCoal), calcaneonavicular coalition (CalcNavCoal), coalition between the intermediate and lateral cuneiform (CF2CF3Coal), coalition between the lateral cuneiform and the third metatarsal (CF3MT3Coal), talocalcaneal coalition (TaloCalcCoal), talonavicular coalition (TaloNavCoal) and os intermetatarseum with the medial cuneiform (CF1Intermet), the first metatarsal (MT1Intermet) and/or the second metatarsal (MT2Intermet) involved. The scoring itself was performed without prior knowledge of skeletal data like sex and age to avoid observer bias. The trait could be marked absent (0), present (1), indiscernible if the bone was damaged (6), or missing if the bone was not present (9) for each separate foot (left (L) or right (R) side). Tarsal coalitions were scored if at least one of the two bones could be marked “absent/present”. In the remarks, some of the found lesions are described in more detail.

For some of the individuals, there is archival data available. This is indicated with 'Yes' or 'No' in the 'Archive data?' column. For the Middenbeemster population, the location of the individual graves was determined from the grave polygons in the excavation data in QGIS by calculating the centroids of these polygons and resulted in a single pair of (x, y) coordinates.

This dataset was used to identify probable genetic relatives within the Middenbeemster skeeltal collection through developmental foot anomalies and to analyse the spatial structure of the Middenbeemster cemetery in the context of intracemetery kinship relations. The Middenbeemster trait frequencies for these anomalies were compared to those of a reference sample of the post-medieval Dutch population (consisting of individuals from the Dutch post-medieval collections of Arnhem, Eindhoven, Zwolle). A hypothetical kinship group could be identified when the trait frequencies of the Middenbeemster sample were considerably higher than those in the reference sample. Other sources had only limited validation value in relation to the hypothesis. Visual examination and spatial statistics of the distribution of the hypothetical kinship group revealed a possible patrilineally structured cemetery, although this is based on a small sample. By putting the observed trait frequencies in a broader context, the data suggested a rather high inter-relatedness of the Middenbeemster community. It also exposed the need for a better understanding of the used traits and perhaps a different approach to kinship analysis (due to necessarily large time investment in contrast to limited results). In conclusion, this study gave an insight into the social structure of post-medieval Dutch communities. Future improvements to kinship analysis may not only be beneficial for bioarchaeology, but also for other fields such as forensic anthropology. For more information on this research, see the thesis (https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3204807) or the article published in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (DOI: 10.1002/oa.3100).

References:

Arts, Nico. 2013. Een knekelveld maakt geschiedenis. Het archeologisch onderzoek van het koor en het grafveld van de middeleeuwse Catharinakerk in Eindhoven, circa 1200-1850. Rapport 22. Utrecht: Uitgeverij Matrijs.

Baetsen, Steffen, Willem Baetsen, Martijn Defilet, and Gerben Zielman. 2018. ‘Sint-Jansbeek brengt Oude Kerkhof boven water. Graven bij de Arnhemse Eusebiuskerk’. Archeologie in Nederland 3: 34–43.

Baetsen, Steffen, and L. Weterings-Korthorst. 2013. ‘De menselijke overblijfselen’. In Een knekelveld maakt geschiedenis. Het archeologisch onderzoek van het koor en het grafveld van de middeleeuwse Catharinakerk in Eindhoven, circa 1200-1850, edited by Nico Arts and E. Altena, 288. Utrecht: Uitgeverij Matrijs.

Bainbridge, D., and S. Genoves Tarazaga. 1956. ‘A Study of Sex Differences in the Scapula’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 86 (2): 109–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/2843994.

Bass, W. M. 1987. Human Osteology: A laboratory and Field Manual. Missouri Archaeological Society. Special Publication 2. Columbia (Mo): Missouri Archaeological Society.

Brooks, S., and J. M. Suchey. 1990. ‘Skeletal Age Determination Based on the Os Pubis: A Comparison of the Acsadi-Nemeskeri and Suchey-Brooks Methods’. Human Evolution 5 (3): 227–38.

Buckberry, J.L., and A.T. Chamberlain. 2002. ‘Age Estimation from the Auricular Surface of the Ilium: A Revised Method’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 119 (3): 231–39. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.10130.

Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas H. Ubelaker. 1997. Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. 3rd ed. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series 44. Fayetteville, Arkansas: Arkansas Archaeological Survey.

Clevis, Hemmy, and T. S. Constandse-Westermann. 1992. De doden vertellen: opgraving in de Broerekerk te Zwolle 1987-1988. Kampen: Stichting Archeologie IJssel/Vechtstreek III.

Hakvoort, A. 2013. ‘De begravingen bij de Keyserkerk te Middenbeemster’. Hollandia Reeks 464. Hollandia Reeks. Zaandijk: Hollandia Archeologen.

İşcan, M. Y., S. R. Loth, and R. K. Wright. 1985. ‘Age Estimation from the Rib by Phase Analysis: White Females’. Journal of Forensic Sciences 30 (3): 853–63.

İşcan, M. Yaşar, Susan R. Loth, and Ronald K. Wright. 1984. ‘Metamorphosis at the Sternal Rib End: A New Method to Estimate Age at Death in White Males’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 65 (2): 147–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330650206.

Lovejoy, C. Owen, Richard S. Meindl, Thomas R. Pryzbeck, and Robert P. Mensforth. 1985. ‘Chronological Metamorphosis of the Auricular Surface of the Ilium: A New Method for the Determination of Adult Skeletal Age at Death’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 68 (1): 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330680103.

Maat, G. J. R., and R. W. Mastwijk. 2009. Manual for the Physical Anthropological Report. 6th ed. Barge’s Anthropologica 6. Leiden: Barge’s Anthropologica.

Maat, George J. R. 2001. ‘Diet and Age-At-Death. Determination from Molar Attrition: A Review Related to the Low Countries’. The Journal of Forensic Odonto-Stomatology 19: 18–21.

McCormick, W. F., J. H. Stewart, and H. Greene. 1991. ‘Sexing of Human Clavicles Using Length and Circumference Measurements’. The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 12 (2): 175–81. https://doi.org/10.1097/00000433-199106000-00017.

Meindl, Richard S., and C. Owen Lovejoy. 1985. ‘Ectocranial Suture Closure: A Revised Method for the Determination of Skeletal Age at Death Based on the Lateral-Anterior Sutures’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 68 (1): 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330680106.

Phenice, T. W. 1969. ‘A Newly Developed Visual Method of Sexing the Os Pubis’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 30 (2): 297–301. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330300214.

Stewart, T. D. 1979. Essentials of Forensic Anthropology. Springfield (Ill.): C. C. Thomas.

Steyn, M., and M. Y. Işcan. 1999. ‘Osteometric Variation in the Humerus: Sexual Dimorphism in South Africans’. Forensic Science International 106 (2): 77–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0379-0738(99)00141-3.

Todd, T. 1920. ‘Age Changes in the Pubic Bones, I: The White Male Pubis’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 3: 285–334.

Workshop for European Anthropologists (WEA). 1980. ‘Recommendations for Age and Sex Diagnoses of the Skeleton’. Journal of Human Evolution 9: 517–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2005.07.002.

This dataset contains estimates of the urban population (in thousands of inhabitants) between the years 700 and 2000 in 2,262 European settlements. It is based on previous historical demographic sources that have been critically assessed and systematically complemented with new population estimates for additional time windows, deriving from either quantitative sources or proxies. Missing data are covered by city-specific imputations. It contains European cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Furthermore medieval first and second nature geographical data for all cities have been added, as well as their historical names.