Deficit of skeletal remains belonging to infants and young children - but not at every cemetery!

A deficit of skeletal remains from infants and young children, especially those children in the first year of life, is often described in cemeteries and burial grounds for most time periods. Various reasons for this are proposed. The present study focuses on two Bronze Age cemeteries from northern Germany (Vechta and Uelsen), which illustrate that infant skeletal remains indeed remain preserved and is closely connected to funeral rites. In the Iron Age, the proportion of child burials in the cemeteries of Schleswig-Holstein clearly decreases compared to the Bronze Age, an observation that correlates with funerary practices, for example, different pyre temperatures as revealed in the proportion of primary carbon discolouration seen on cremated bone. Nevertheless, supposed deficits in child burials cannot simply be corrected for demographic evaluations, since the percentage of deceased children can fluctuate considerably and therefore general assumptions of a child mortality rate between 40 and 50% are invalid, as can be shown with various examples.