The Roman mystical burial ritual of pouring liquid plaster on the dead was not limited to elite adults, as previously thought. Researchers found that it was also performed on children, including infants as young as 1 month old.
According to two blog posts published by Seeing the Dead, a joint project between the University of York and York Museums Trust, this finding contradicts Roman legal sources that say infants under 12 months of age should not be memorialized at all. Their team is investigating the discovery of a child inside an unusual “gypsum burial” in York, northern England.
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“Infants were the most vulnerable in Roman society,” Maureen Carroll, a Roman archaeologist at the University of York, said in a Feb. 18 blog post, especially given the high infant mortality rate of around 30%. However, although historical records indicate that infants under one year of age were not to be memorialized because infant deaths were commonplace, Carroll found that these restrictions only applied to public memorialization.
“They had nothing to do with the feelings of sadness and loss that the surviving families personally felt and expressed,” she wrote.
Of the more than 70 plaster burial objects Carroll examined, at least seven belonged to children, including three infants under four months old. Liquid plaster burials seem to have been restricted to the Roman elite of York and were usually performed on adults. Infants were often buried in large pots called amphora. ceramic tile box. Or a small wooden coffin.
A remarkable infant burial was discovered in 1892 during the construction of the York Railway. The infant, one or two months old, was covered with a purple-dyed wool cloak decorated with gold thread and tassels, placed in a lead sarcophagus, and covered with liquid plaster.
No bones of the infant remain today, but traces of his bright purple and gold cloak can still be seen. Sarah Hitchens, an archaeological textile expert at the University of York, said in a Feb. 23 blog post that this is the only plaster burial site with dyed fabric ever discovered.
“The purple fabric was likely made from animal fibers such as wool,” Hitchens wrote, adding that the cloak was likely draped over the infant’s body as a burial cloth.
Chemists on the project team are currently analyzing the hardened plaster coverings to gather further information about Romano-British burial practices.
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“We are testing the plaster casing for traces of aromatic substances such as frankincense, mastic, dried sap or resin,” Carroll told Live Science in an email. They also plan to test the purple dye to determine whether it comes from the murex, a type of snail from which the ancient Romans extracted a natural red-purple dye. The gold thread will also be analyzed, Carroll said.
Other liquid plaster burials found in York include a child around four months old who was found wrapped between the legs of two adults. Although it is unclear whether the three men constituted a family, “it is clear that they were closely related in life and death,” Carroll wrote.
In another case, a girl who was between 7 and 9 years old at the time of her death was buried with jewelry including gold, silver, copper, jet, glass and coral. Two pairs of boots and a pair of sandals were found at her feet, and the bones of what was probably a pet chicken were also found in the coffin.
“3D scans of her body, visible under the shroud and sheets, reveal how frail and thin she was, possibly indicating a lingering illness before her death,” Carroll wrote.
These lavish burials of infants and children discovered in York demonstrate that Roman legal texts, written primarily by older men, did not reflect the reality of life and death in Roman Britain.
“All this definitely suggests that these young children were valued and cared for, contrary to the traditional idea that the Romans didn’t care if their infants died because they had a high infant mortality rate,” Carroll said. “Complete nonsense!”
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