Archaeologists have unearthed a huge Roman cemetery containing the burial sites of more than 250 infants and stillborn children.
The ancient cemetery was discovered in Place du Maréchal Leclerc, a square in the historic centre of the French city of Auxerre, during excavations carried out by the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeology (INRAP).
The cemetery, believed to date from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, is one of the largest “Gallo-Roman” cemeteries for infants and stillborn children ever excavated in France.
What is now France was once part of Gaul, the name given by the Romans to an area of Western Europe inhabited by a Celtic people known as the Gauls, which came under Roman rule in the second half of the 1st millennium BC.
INRAP said the newly discovered cemetery at Auxerre was extremely well preserved, offering archaeologists an “extremely rare” opportunity to study a “unique” group of young children.
“We are able to observe the funerary practices associated with this very special group – the burial practices and other actions taken by the bereaved,” said INRAP excavation director Loïc Gaétan and archaeologist Carole Fauchelier. Newsweek.
Most of the bodies were buried in the fetal position, although some were lying face up.
“especially, [the necropolis] The types of containers used to hold the bodies vary widely, indicating individual and family choices, and some tombs appear to have been very complex in their construction.”
The containers in which the remains are buried include wooden coffins, ceramic vessels, and sometimes they are wrapped in cloth or simply covered with pieces of amphorae, a type of ceramic vessel used in antiquity, to protect the remains.
Excavations at the site began in February 2024 ahead of landscaping work on the plaza. Since then, researchers have unearthed more than 250 burials, making the site a particularly important example of this type of necropolis, according to archaeologists.
“Several infant graveyards have already been excavated in France, [these] “Archaeological sites rarely reach this scale,” Gaetan and Fauchelier said.
Most of the remains found at Auxerre belong to infants under the age of one, a group that had a high mortality rate in ancient times.
An accurate investigation into the deaths has yet to be carried out, but the remains appear to include those of people who were only a few months old at the time of their death, as well as stillborn babies and those who died in miscarriages.
One adult burial has been excavated from the site in the oldest archaeological layer, but its presence has yet to be explained by experts.
“Ancient Gaul cemeteries often contained clusters of young children on the periphery of larger settlements. Although we are currently only able to excavate part of the site, it is likely that we are at such a site, on the periphery of a larger cemetery,” Gaetan and Fauchelier said.
The cemetery was located on the edge of the Roman town of Autessiodoro (the former name of Auxerre): according to Roman law, cemeteries were located outside the ancient settlements.
What’s unusual about the site is that the burials are arranged in four or five layers, one on top of the other — a feature that researchers say has never been observed before in France.
Another peculiarity is the fact that some of the burials appear to have been destroyed during the interment, which is unusual according to Roman custom.
This is likely due to a lack of space, but it’s also possible that some of the babies were not alive at birth and therefore were not recognised as separate individuals, the researchers said.
Few artifacts were found in the burials at the cemetery. However, researchers did find artifacts, many of which were small and likely placed next to the bodies for protection in the afterlife. These included pearls, coins, and spindles. A small ceramic cup was also found next to one child’s head.
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