The archaeology of infancy and infanticide

The idea of the session is to stimulate and challenge the way in which we are thinking archaeologically about infants (or indeed not thinking about them). Infancy is surrounded and defined by social and historical constructions, but little significance has been attached to the processes which determined how infants lived, died and were perceived. This session therefore examines the ways in which patterns of infant care were (and are) metaphors for complex social beliefs and tensions. Further, in some contexts the infant is clearly transformed into a powerful symbol. The session looks in particular at infant death, including practices of infanticide and child sacrifice in different cultural contexts and the ways in which different societies bury and commemorate their infant dead. Critical questions such as whether or not preferential female infanticide was routinely practised in prehistory and antiquity - and the potential implications of this - will be raised and discussed, as will whether or not infants are "missing" from cemeteries because of differential preservation. The session speakers will also present new data, including an evaluation of recent research on the DNA sexing of infant skeletal material in Israel and the UK, as well as excavation of and research on recently excavated capacocha sacrifices in Peru. In conclusion, it is mooted that the infant and infancy are crucial components in the cultural maps of human societies, and infants can no longer be regarded as merely small humans of culturally inactive status. Infants may not be active agents but infancy has active agency.
 

Introduction. Metaphors, tensions and routes to posterity: the archaeology of infancy and infanticide

We all share the experience of having been infants, yet it is the one stage of our lives of which we have no memory. The collective memory of infancy is a construction, where fantasies and ideals crash hard into lived realities and actualities. What many adults regard as the simple routines of infant care are in fact complex negotiations which result from and impact upon the anxieties and tensions surrounding our biological and cultural periodicity. The infant is trained into routines in such a way as to force the players into a sustained drama of control and accession. The association of childbirth and infants with widespread human symbolic concerns, such as the containment of excrement, urine and blood, and the control of noise and movement, makes them embodiments of powerful cultural processes with particular meanings in particular societies. The manipulation of the infant, the infant dead, infant space and images of the infant frequently acts as metaphor for adult relationships and tensions, from the micro-scale of the family to the macro-scale of major political systems. Infant ritual sacrifice, for example, reveals a relationship between biological genetic imperatives and human attempts to lock into posterity in other, cultural, ways.

Too young to die and too old to care: children and ancestors at Huaca de la Luna

During the 1995 and 1996 field seasons, the remains of three children were discovered in a special plaza of the Huaca de la Luna, one of the principal ceremonial centres of the Moche culture on the Peruvian North Coast. They were found lying just underneath a series of sacrificed men captured in battle and killed during spells of torrential rains or Nino events. In this paper, it will be argued that these children form an integral part of the sacrificial apparatus dedicated to the world of the sea and more particularly to the cataclysmic Nino events. In order to document further these exceptional rituals, the representations of children and sacrifices portrayed in their ritual iconography will be explored.

Infant sacrifice at Carthage and the social ideal of the child

This paper discusses the role of child sacrifice at the tophet of Carthage and its relationship to the construction of the social ideal of the child. Also addressed is the crucial matter of the demographic implications of infant and child sacrifice.

Constructions of infancy - aspects of the mortuary rituals for infants and children in late Iron Age and Roman Britain (and neighbouring provinces)

A striking and well known aspect of this period is the under-representation of the bodies of infants and children in formal cemetery contexts. Their deposition, sometimes in large numbers, on settlement sites, has been the subject of much recent study. The emphasis of this paper lies instead on the mortuary treatment of those infants and children which are buried in 'normal' cemeteries, in particular cremation cemeteries of the period in question. It is now widely acknowledged that mortuary rituals do not create a mirror image of a society but idealised representations of it. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the creation of these representations through the detailed reconstruction and contrast of the treatment of infants/ young children and adults from the pyre to the grave. Beneath the superficial similarities of 'Romanised' mortuary ritual, highly diverse treatments are visible which are not so far accounted for by broad statements on the changing conception of the child.

New directions in the scientific study of infant skeletons from archaeological sites

A trawl of the archaeological literature published in Britain shows that immature human skeletons, particularly infants, are usually given short shrift in osteological studies. However, the situation is changing. Recent innovations in archaeological science have increased the information obtainable from skeletal remains of infants and children, and there has been a growing realisation in general that the archaeology of infancy and childhood has been a somewhat neglected area. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the recent advances in scientific methodologies for examining infant remains, and to discuss the relevance of the data produced to matters of mainstream archaeological and historical interest.

Determining the sex of infanticide victims from the Late Roman era through ancient DNA analysis

Infanticide has since time immemorial been an accepted practice for disposing of unwanted infants. Archaeological evidence for infanticide was obtained in Ashkelon, where skeletal remains of some 100 neonates were discovered in a sewer, beneath a Roman bathhouse, which might also have served as a brothel. Written sources indicate that in ancient Roman society infanticide especially of females was commonly practised, but that females were occasionally saved and reared as courtesans. We performed DNA-based sex identification of the infant remains. Out of 43 left femurs tested 19 specimens provided results: 14 were found to be males and 5 females. The high frequency of males suggests selective preservation of females and that the infants may have been offspring of courtesans, serving in the bathhouse, supporting its use as a brothel.