Infant and Child Burial Rites in Roman Britain: a Study from East Yorkshire

Martin J. Millett · Rebecca L. Gowland

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Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies Classical Antiquity Studies Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning

Abstract

Abstract The discovery of infant burials on excavated domestic sites in Roman Britain is fairly common but in the past these burials have often been dismissed as a product of unceremonious disposal. There is a growing literature which considers the phenomenon, but it has been dominated by debates around the suggestion that these burials provide evidence for infanticide, with a focus on the osteological evidence for and against this hypothesis. There has been less systematic consideration of the archaeological context of such burials. In this paper we examine the excavated evidence of two large groups of such burials from sites in East Yorkshire which demonstrate that the burial of neonatal infants followed a careful age-specific funerary rite. We suggest that this conclusion further undermines the widespread assumption that infants were disposed of without ceremony and as a result of infanticide.

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References

1988The Gender of the GiftProblems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia 1990The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance 2005Children and Material Culture 1980The estimation of late fetal and perinatal age from limb bone length by linear and logarithmic regression 1997Invisible people and processes : writing gender and childhood into European archaeology 2011Cultural identity in the ancient Mediterranean 2015Burial, Society and Context in the Roman World 1984Expositio and Oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family

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