Infancy and Earliest Childhood in the Roman World. ‘A Fragment of Time’

Abstract

nants of kinship and grief in the past. Rebay-Salisbury’s chapter also supplies numerous examples of such burials from Bronze Age Austria, with a more specific focus on mother/ child relationships. In addition, she highlights some truly remarkable multiple interments, including the body of a man overlaying three children (DNA results are pending), and the touching burial of two children aged 2 and 6 years, possibly siblings, in an embrace. Inevitably, many of the chapters focus on burial evidence, but a number also incorporate information gleaned from textual sources to aid interpretations. For example, Zoega’s chapter on early Christian household cemeteries from Northern Iceland shows how three-generation households were common. The importance of this lived proximity for the transmission of inter-generational knowledge, experience and familial identity was significant. These cemeteries add another dimension to the Icelandic Sagas which more often present a negative image of old age, with a diminution of power and status. It reminds us that power has different forms. Gallou’s chapter on Minoan and Mycenaean societies of the late Bronze Age Aegean is one of the few that focuses on material rather than skeletal evidence. She provides a rich array of relevant evidence for children and older generations, including artistic depictions of elderly women playing active roles in ritual healing, as well as childcare and funerary preparations. Other chapters from Le Roy and colleagues examine the under-representation and occasional complete absence of children under 5 years from Neolithic burial contexts in France. Denham and colleagues highlight the value of cremated human remains and archival records for understanding age-related burial practice in the Bronze and Iron Age in Norway. Given the focus on skeletal remains throughout the book, it is apt that the final chapter by Maaranen and Buckberry addresses the thorny problem of skeletal age estimation and the tendency for current techniques to under-estimate age-at-death of older people and thus contribute to their invisibility. Overall, this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. My only minor criticism is that the introduction felt a bit cursory and could have done more to set the scene in terms of current theoretical and methodological approaches to the life course. The book would also have benefited from a concluding chapter to highlight key themes and future directions. The book showcases innovative and creative approaches for exploring hitherto elusive intergenerational relationships in the past. I will leave you with Gallou’s (70) pertinent observation at the end of her excellent chapter: ‘There is no foot too small or too old that it cannot leave an imprint on this world, past and present’.