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Roman history, and particularly aspects of their technology, interests me very much and my attention has been drawn to a recent report about the archaeological finds in the Yewden Villa complex in Hambledon, Buckinghamshire.
The Yewden site was extensively excavated in 1912 by archaeologist Alfred Heneage Cocks. He and his team discovered the remains of a villa and workshop complex containing tessellated pavements, bathroom suites, a well, 26 pits, 14 kilns and a wealth of high status finds including a hoard of 294 coins.
In use between the 1st and 4th centuries, the site also contained the remains of 97 infants which were hidden under walls or buried under courtyards close to each other and these and the other artefacts uncovered are housed in over 300 boxes in Buckinghamshire County Museum.
The bones of the infants have recently been examined in detail and all were found to have died at 40 weeks gestation, very soon after birth. What could have caused their deaths; was it disease or some other cause?
The archaeologists believe that the only explanation is that the inhabitants of the villa were systematically killing their unwanted babies. And that led them to theorise that the villa was, in fact, a brothel.
Roman contraception was ineffective and unwanted pregnancies and infanticide were common in those days. Indeed, a spokesman for Chiltern Archaeology has said that archaeological records suggest Roman infants were not considered to be ‘full’ human beings until about the age of two and that children younger than that were not buried in cemeteries but in domestic sites.
Much as I admire the Romans for their accomplishments, infanticide is not one of them and the discovery of the likely cause of the death of these little babies is extremely sad.
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Roman history, and particularly aspects of their technology, interests me very much and my attention has been drawn to a recent report about the archaeological finds in the Yewden Villa complex in Hambledon, Buckinghamshire.
The Yewden site was extensively excavated in 1912 by archaeologist Alfred Heneage Cocks. He and his team discovered the remains of a villa and workshop complex containing tessellated pavements, bathroom suites, a well, 26 pits, 14 kilns and a wealth of high status finds including a hoard of 294 coins.
In use between the 1st and 4th centuries, the site also contained the remains of 97 infants which were hidden under walls or buried under courtyards close to each other and these and the other artefacts uncovered are housed in over 300 boxes in Buckinghamshire County Museum.
The bones of the infants have recently been examined in detail and all were found to have died at 40 weeks gestation, very soon after birth. What could have caused their deaths; was it disease or some other cause?
The archaeologists believe that the only explanation is that the inhabitants of the villa were systematically killing their unwanted babies. And that led them to theorise that the villa was, in fact, a brothel.
Roman contraception was ineffective and unwanted pregnancies and infanticide were common in those days. Indeed, a spokesman for Chiltern Archaeology has said that archaeological records suggest Roman infants were not considered to be ‘full’ human beings until about the age of two and that children younger than that were not buried in cemeteries but in domestic sites.
Much as I admire the Romans for their accomplishments, infanticide is not one of them and the discovery of the likely cause of the death of these little babies is extremely sad.
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