From <http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020-02-20.html>:
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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.02.20

Jacopo Tabolli (ed.), From Invisible to Visible: New Methods and Data
for the Archaeology of Infant and Child Burials in Pre-Roman Italy and
Beyond. Studies in Mediterranean archaeology, 149.   Uppsala:  Astrom
Editions, 2018.  Pp. 273.  ISBN 9789925745524.  €68,00.

Reviewed by Reine-Marie Bérard, CNRS, Aix Marseille Université, Centre
Camille Jullian ([log in to unmask])
[The Table of Contents is listed at the end of the review.]

This volume is the outcome of an international conference organised by
Jacopo Tabolli in 2017 at Trinity College Dublin. After a short
editor’s preface, the book is divided into six parts and 23 papers,
dealing with archaeological, anthropological and epigraphical data.
The first part focuses on methodological and theoretical approaches;
it references other disciplines such as ethnography, psychology and
contemporary history. The five other parts are organized
geographically: Ancient Rome and Italy (part 2); Veii and Tarquinia
(part 3); northern sites from Tivoli to Verona (part 4); Abruzzo and
Samnium (part 5); Sicily, Motya and Sardinia (part 6). The addenda
constitute a seventh part without any real unity that pairs a paper
about in-field conservation methods for child burials and a report
focusing on two late antique graves from Macedonia; regardless of its
interest, it clearly deviates from the chrono-cultural frame of the
volume.

This book is one of a series of recent works about the archaeology of
childhood in antiquity, which now constitute a bibliography on a topic
that was for a long time significantly deficient. 1 It underlines the
importance of funerary data in understanding infants and children in
ancient societies, since they are often silent and invisible in other
sources. With its specific geographical and chronological framework
(though the notion of ‘pre-Roman Italy’, which does not correspond to
any ancient cultural, ethnic or political reality, is never
discussed), this volume provides an important contribution to the
current debate by offering new data on various contexts long unknown.
It is impossible to comment on each contribution in this brief review,
but a few points can be underlined.

First, many authors discuss methodological problems raised by the
study of infant and child burials, the most important of which is no
doubt the difficulty of in-field identification. In this regard, the
paper of Angela Trentacoste et alii is striking. It examines infant
bones from two Etruscan sites, found during laboratory studies to be
commingled with zooarcheological remains, because nobody had been able
to recognise them in the field. Indeed, infant bones and burials often
go unidentified by archaeologists, especially outside explicitly
funerary contexts. The recent evolution of funerary archaeology
towards a greater specialisation and collaboration with
anthropologists directly in the field has changed many things, and the
possibility of getting precise anthropological data is a key element
for understanding the mortuary treatment of children. The paper of
Claudia Lambrugo on the Peucetian site of Jazzo Fornasiello
(Basilicata) notably illustrates the results of such collaboration.
The excavation and study of the infant pot burials found in the
settlement area allowed recognition of the precise organization of
graves of various phases found inside the settlement, and even the
phases of use and commemoration of every single grave. It was only by
the careful examination of the skeletons, of the position of the
bones, and of the very fine stratigraphy inside the graves that the
author could reach her conclusions. Of course, not all the papers rely
on such good anthropological and archaeological data: some deal with
older excavations, with only lab studies on a limited number of
graves. Yet most of the authors give great importance to the
anthropological data they can get and that is certainly a sign of a
recent and major evolution of the discipline.

Nonetheless, a systematic presentation of the methods is essential and
not always available. For example, M.J. Becker — one of the very first
anthropologists to have worked on large cemeteries from pre-Roman
Italy — claims in his paper to have found an ‘extremely accurate’
method for identifying the sex of a cremated individual ‘where at
least 100 g of bones were recovered’ (p. 98). Yet, as the author
himself underlines, the rate of sex identification for burned remains
is usually much lower. Given the importance of such affirmation, the
reader wishes to have more details. Relatedly, a methodological
reflection and discussion of the difference between sex and gender
could have been useful, perhaps in an introduction, since confusion is
obvious in several papers. It is also important to remember that no
anthropological method has yet proved to be statistically effective in
determining the biological sex of the remains of pre-pubescent
individuals. One should thus remain extremely cautious about all the
assumptions concerning the partition of child burials between males
and females proposed in various contributions.

Another interesting discussion raised by this book is that of the
definition of age groups. Indeed, many papers use the terms ‘infant’,
‘children’, ‘immature’ and ‘subadults’, but not always when referring
to the same age ranges. The authors are certainly not to blame for
such variations, only reflect the absence of general agreement on the
definition of these terms in archaeological studies. Yet it would have
been interesting to deal with this issue in the introduction, and even
to put forward a standard definition that all the authors could have
followed. Among the contributors, Deneb T. Cesana and Vincenzo
d’Ercole tackle the question with the greatest accuracy. First, they
underline the problems related to the anthropological habit of
dividing subadults in five-year groups, inferred from demographic
methodologies, while ‘they do not correspond to the stages of growth,
child development and risk of death’ (p. 160). They also lay stress on
the difficulties of reconciling the different notions of age:
biological, morphological, civil and social. The last category is
undoubtedly the most significant in an historical perspective, and it
appears central in many contributions.

Several papers indeed draw on the variations of funerary treatment to
discuss the existence of possible thresholds related to the
construction of childhood and personhood in pre-Roman Italy. The age
of four seems to be an important transition on several sites: while
children older than this age were buried with adults in specific
funerary spaces, younger ones were buried within or around the houses.
The period between three and five years indeed appears as a crucial
moment for the construction of child identity in many ancient and
modern societies, as Francesca Fulminante underlines, using
archaeological, ethnographic and psychological data. At several sites
covered in this volume, another important threshold appears to be
around the age of one.

The selection of the cemetery population on the basis of age comes as
no great surprise, since the absence or underrepresentation of infants
and young children in ancient cemeteries is frequently underlined. In
a well-known work, Ian Morris even theorised the exclusion of children
from the urban cemeteries of ancient Athens as a sign that subadults
were considered to be ‘social non-persons’. 2 It is particularly
interesting that several authors in the volume under review offer a
completely different way of contemplating child burials in settlement
areas. For example, A. De Santis et alii insist that in ancient
Latium, rich infant burials were at the border of the settlement. They
thus possibly represent a means through which aristocratic family
groups delimited their space of representation and power. Another
interesting case presented by Marcello Mogetta and Sheira Cohen is
that of four child burials from the Early Iron Age in the settlement
of Gabii: these very young children received wealthy grave goods,
including an exceptional bronze shroud. The fact that these graves
were not inside the houses but at their borders, suggests that they
were made to be seen by the neighbouring families, being part of a
complex system of representation. Though buried inside the settlement,
in death these children thus became important social actors.

In some other cases, age does not at all seem to be a relevant
criterion for access to cemeteries. Such is the case in the Final
Bronze Age cemeteries from the Middle Adriatic region presented by
Deneb Cesana and Vincenzo d’Ercole. Indeed, around 33% of the graves
in these burial grounds contain subadults, a proportion that may
correspond to rates of child mortality expected for pre-industrial
societies. In other cases, the selection does not appear to depend
strictly on age, but rather on status. Joachim Weidig and Nicola Bruni
present the exceptional case of the 8th to 6th century necropolis of
Piazza d’Armi in Spoleto (Umbria). Though young children are rare in
this necropolis, six of them were buried in what seems to be a family
group. Three of these graves contained weapons, and one is
particularly remarkable. It contained an infant, aged 9-to-12 months,
who had received exceptional funerary offerings, including many
ceramics, some of a seemingly purely ritual function. But there were
also several weapons and two small disc-cuirasses made at a size
proportional to the infant, though not worn in the grave. Given the
striking insistence on the status of a young child, who certainly had
no achievements of his own at such a young age, the authors conclude
the existence of a system of status and wealth inheritance among
aristocratic groups in pre-Roman Umbria. Status inheritance is also
central in the 8th and 7th century Picene necropolis of Novilara
presented by Chiara Delpino. For pre- Roman Samnium, Elisa Perego and
Rafael Scopacasa go even further by interpreting some rich child
burials as a sign that these children may have had important roles and
full social personhood not only in death, but even in life.

In different ways, all these cases show that infant and child burials
had a form of agency, and this may be one of the greatest points of
originality of this book: not taking the exclusion of subadults from
ancient social communities for granted. On the contrary, many authors
propose new and positive ways to interpret the variations of the
funerary treatment of children, even in their apparent
marginalisation.

On the other hand, some contributions in this volume take the very
delicate side of suggesting that the specifics of the mortuary
treatment of some children might indicate human sacrifice. One remains
very sceptical about the cases from Tarquinia very briefly presented
by Maria Bonghi Jovino with no further argument than the localisation
of the graves in the vicinity of a possible temple. The interpretation
that Maria Antonietta Fufazzola Delpino gives of some child burials
from 9th and 8th century Tivoli is also very questionable. While no
anthropological data is available, based only on the observation of
the crushing of their skeletons by heavy stones, the author boldly
concludes that several children were sacrificed. The much more
probable hypothesis that these stones simply collapsed from a
no-longer extant, perishable tomb cover is briefly raised by the
author, only to be discarded without any convincing argument. Other
evidence for these ‘sacrifices’ would be the crouched position of some
children, the lack of grave goods and the presence of a circle of
stones around the grave. According to the author, it was ‘intended to
limit its area and warn people that it contained a sacrificial victim’
(p. 110). Yet the author herself also presents a stone-circled grave
with a very rich set of grave goods, both fine ceramics and bronze
ornaments which suggests that that stone circles were not restricted
to poor graves, and thus were not a sign of exclusion from the social
community (p. 109). Finally, the reference to late Roman authors, some
from the 4th and 5th centuries AD, which point to human sacrifice in
pre-Roman populations, appears to be a weak argument to deal with
burials fourteen centuries older.

Regardless of these possible disagreements, one will appreciate the
completeness of the volume and the general quality of its papers that
present mainly unpublished and stimulating data. Let us hope that it
will encourage the development of further in-field interdisciplinary
collaboration among archaeologists, physical anthropologists and other
specialists. Such collaboration will undoubtedly be a key element for
the renewal of our knowledge on childhood construction and child life
and death in ancient societies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. Addressing methods: past and present
1.1. Jean MacIntosh Turfa – Archaeology’s Tir Na N-og (‘The Land of
the Young’): understanding burials of children in ancient Italy (pp.
3-11)
1.2. Alessandra Piergrossi and Jacopo Tabolli – Hide and seek.
Searching for theories and methods within the ‘history of research’
for infant and child burials in central Tyrrhenian Italy (pp. 13-19)
1.3. Valentino Nizzo – ‘Rites of passage beyond death’. Liminal
strategies and premature death in protohistoric communities (pp.
21-28)
1.4. Francesca Fulminante – Intersecting age and social boundaries in
sub-adult burials of central Italy during the 1st millennium BC (pp.
29-38)

2. Including or secluding infants between Rome and Latium
2.1. Anna De Santis, Iefke van Kampen, Clementina Panella, Paola
Catalano, Carla Caldarini, Andrea Battistini, Walter B. Pantano,
Claudia Minniti, Alessandra Celant, Donatella Magri, Antonio Ferrandes
and Francesca Romana Fiano – Infant burials related to inhabited areas
in Rome: new results for understanding socio-cultural structures of an
ancient community (pp. 41-46)
2.2. Marcello Mogetta and Sheira Cohen – Infant and young child burial
practices from an elite domestic compound at Early Iron Age and
Orientalising Gabii (pp. 47-57)
2.3. Marijke Gnade – A new Iron Age child burial from Satricum (pp. 59-68)

3. New old data from south Etruria
3.1. Jacopo Tabolli – What to expect when you are not expecting. Time
and space for infant and child burials at Veii in the necropolis of
Grotta Gramiccia (pp. 71-82)
3.2. Maria Bonghi Jovino – Tarquinia. Infant burials in the inhabited
area: a short reappraisal (pp. 83-87)
3.3. Marshall J. Becker – Infancy and childhood at pre-Roman
Tarquinia: the necropolis of Le Rose as an example of regional
patterns and cultural borders during the Early Iron Age (9th–early 8th
centuries BC) (pp. 89-100).

4. Meeting differences while going north
4.1. Maria Antonietta Fugazzola Delpino – Infant and child burials in
the area of Rocca Pia at Tivoli. Ritual customs, defensive magic,
funerary ceremonies and human sacrifices (pp. 103-112)
4.2. Joachim Weidig and Nicola Bruni – Little heirs of an Umbrian
royal family of the 7th century BC (pp. 113-121)
4.3. Chiara Delpino – Infant and child burials in the Picene
necropolis of Novilara (Pesaro): the 2012-2013 excavations (pp. 123-
131)
4.4. Angela Trentacoste, Sarah Kansa, Antony Tuck and Suellen Gauld –
Out with the bath water? Infant remains in pre-Roman zooarchaeological
assemblages (pp. 133-142)
4.5. Simona Marchesini and David Stifter – Inscriptions from
Italo-Celtic burials in the Seminario maggiore (Verona) (pp. 143-154)

5.Childhood (in)visibility in south Italy
5.1. Deneb T. Cesana and Vincenzo d’Ercole – Infant burials in the
Middle Adriatic area (Abruzzo, central Italy) from the Final Bronze
Age to the Archaic period: new data through a bioarchaeological
approach (pp. 157-165)
5.2. Elisa Perego and Rafael Scopacasa – Children and marginality in
pre-Roman Samnium: a personhood-focused approach (pp. 167-176).
5.3. Claudia Lambrugo – Peucetian babies. New data from the
enchytrismoi at Jazzo Fornasiello (Gravina in Puglia-BA) (pp. 177-184)

6. Landing on the islands
6.1. Massimo Cultraro – Searching for the missing corpses: infant and
child burials in southeastern Sicily from the Late Bronze Age to the
Early Iron Age (pp. 187-195)
6.2. Adriano Orsingher – Forever young: rethinking infancy and
childhood in Motya (pp. 197-206)
6.3. Michele Guirguis, Rosana Pla Orquín and Elisa Pompianou –
Premature deaths in Punic Sardinia. The perception of childhood in
funerary contexts from Monte Sirai and Villamar (pp. 207-215).

7. Addenda
7.1. Wilma Basilissi – ‘First aid’ and in-field conservation for
infant and child bones in archaeological contexts: notes on problems,
methodology and operational criteria in Pre-Roman archaeology (pp.
219-224).
7.2 Paraskevi Tritsaroli and Meropi Ziogana – Bioarchaeological
investigation of childhood in Late Antiquity: a case analysis from
northern Pieria, Greece (pp. 225-234) Bibliography (p. 235)
Index (p. 273)


Notes:


1.   Among others: J. Baxter, The archaeology of childhood: children,
gender, and material culture, Walnut Creek, 2005; A.M.
Guimier-Sorbets, Y. Morizot (ed) L’enfant et la mort dans l’Antiquité,
I. Le signalement des tombes d’enfants, Paris, 2010; A. Hermary, C
Dubois (ed), L’enfant et la mort dans l’Antiquité, III. Le matériel
associé aux tombes d’enfants, Aix-en-Provence, 2012; M.D. Nenna (ed.),
L’enfant et la mort dans l’Antiquité, II. Types de tombes et
traitement du corps des enfants dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine,
Alexandrie, 2012; C. Lambrugo (ed), Una favola breve: archeologia e
antropologia per la storia dell’infanzia, Sesto Fiorentino, 2019.
2.   I. Morris, Burial and ancient society: the rise of the Greek
city-state, Cambridge, 1987.

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