This article will discuss stillbirth and neonatal death and feature images of human remains.

From February to May of 2024, the National Institute of Preventative Archaeology in France (Inrap) carried out an excavation at the Place du Maréchal Leclerc in Auxerre, France ahead of landscaping.

Prior to becoming the city of Auxerre in the 4th century, the site was the necropolis of the Gallo-Roman provincial capital of Autessiodurum from the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Archaeologists uncovered an area of the necropolis dedicated to the graves of perinatal infants, without any adult burials, which is unusual.

“These populations are rarely found in suburban necropolises but rather in places where the affect of bereaved families takes precedence over Roman law. They are thus found on the outskirts of craft workshops, domestic residences or public buildings. This burial context still remains unknown in the case of Auxerre.”

Inrap. 20 March 2024. “2 000 ans d’histoire sous la Place du Maréchal Leclerc à Auxerre (Yonne).”

There were five levels of tombs, with newer burials destroying earlier ones, meaning either that space was limited or at a premium. Swaddles were secured with bronze or iron fibulae and the babies interred in ceramic containers, wooden coffins, or beneath amphora fragments or long curved tiles called imbrex. One grave was marked with a stone with a rose engraving.

Items intended to protect the infant in the afterlife were found: a pearl, a coin, a spindle, a ring; as well as broken crockery which previously held food for the dead and the gods. One little girl had a small ceramic cup near her head.

Despite the millennia, it’s impossible to doubt the love and grief of their families. As a historian of babies, I intellectually understand how high infant mortality was (and still is in many parts of the world), but the visual of the physical remains of so many infants, lovingly interred, really breaks my heart for their families.

Sources

Staff. 4 June 2024. “Une nécropole antique de trés jeunes enfants et mort-nés à Auxerre (Yonne).” Inrap.

Staff. 20 March 2024. “2 000 ans d’histoire sous la Place du Maréchal Leclerc à Auxerre (Yonne).” Inrap.

Milligan, Mark. 7 June 2024. “Archaeologists find a necropolis of stillborn babies.” Heritage Daily.