No matter why there were women at the stie giving birth, the years given between 150 and 200 means that there were potential 50 years for those 97 babies to die. That is barely 2 a year! With death rates are birth very high, that seems like a LOW number! If it was a maternity/mother goddess center, they were doing good work!
There are slightly less horrible events that could, explain the trove of infant remains, that don't require deliberate intent: if it were near a brothal, the deaths could be linked to stillbirth and late-term abortions due to disease. It's still seen in farming in significant numbers of 5 to 10% of sheep pregnancies for example. It doesn't even have to be a venereal disease, many of which can cause infant death. Many insect-born viruses can contribute to outcomes that look perfectly formed to the untrained eye.
Full term abortions are horrible and disgusting and do take deliberate j i intent hence full term so not a reasonable explanation. Dont make excuses for disgusting behavior.
Could have just been one families dead babies too. It doesnt say what size or age they are yet anyway im half way through. And if its over 200 years you could easily have had 94 dead babies of different sizes.. including cousins and aunts and whatnot. I do wish theyd say whay size the damn skelingtons were.
I'd want to know the infant mortality rate for a typical roman villa at that time, before jumping to infanticide as a conclusion...My own great grandfather was the only one of six to survive to adutlhood...three of which were lost before their first year.
Absolutely. Id like to know how old the " infants" were which would be pretty important fact. They make up all these stories but dont tell us the basic facts we would need to know! How old? Buried all at once or in different layers? Very little facts about them just conjecture.
I find it somewhat funny (in a peculiar way) that they are so almost horrified by the discovery of the babies. Their view of reality during the Roman era is obviously colored by their modern sensibilities. Life was significantly more difficult then than now, and whether disposing of inconvenient children or ritual sacrifice was the reason, it was "normal" then. And if it was a birthing center, the deaths vs. number of the total births of the centuries, 97 really isn't that many.
I find it fascinating that those tiny little bones from those poor forgotten newborns are still in the ground!? Imagine if theyd developed that area? Concrete Razing top soil One reason i love the UK
97 deaths are nothing if over the course of 75 years 10,000 babies were born there. If indeed it was a brothel there might be more signs of traffic and trade for that purpose ; I'm voting for the idea of a birthing "clinic "
Could also be a place for young girls or unmarried women to have their babies in secret. Over 50 years, it's only 2 babies a year and that doesn't sound like very much at all.
I am not surprised that the Romans (or perhaps "Romans") stayed on after the fall of the empire. Roman was more a political, economic and cultural system than an ethnicity. Roman soldiers were drawn from all over the empire, and generally posted to places where they didn't have family or tribal connections. Once they'd served for long enough to get a pension (in the form of a land grant) they often stayed where they were posted, rather than returning to where they came from. I suspect that in many cases they would have acquired a local wife and they would have a circle of local friends (perhaps sons of other Roman soldiers, retired soldiers, Romans who plied a variety of non-military trades and professions, and so on). Over time even the locals became Romanised. So, by the time the Roman empire gasped its last, the "Romans" in Britain probably would have seen staying on as a logical move. There were also the questions of how the Roman soldiers would get the fares to go back to where they came from and also the issues of political and economic instability in those places. All of that would make quietly earning a decent living in a formerly-Roman fort/town a much more attractive proposition.
I cannot help to think of the life of a prostitute in the Roman era - falling pregnant not knowing who the father is and knowing there is a possibility of the baby dying when being born or killed - it is heartbreaking
@@ladyravenmoon666it absolutely is. They need the woman back to work, making money, using her for business trades, not caring and raising for a baby while shes bent over for a random man with syphilis. Youre trying to be mrs prolife, but that isnt remotely even a thought when it comes to these things going on hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
I assume the dna might tell you blood type. My grandmother had 10 pregnancies and only 5 adult surviving children. 4 babies died within 24 hours of birth due to RH factor. Also one died as an infant from "bloody flux", which I don't know the current name of. So many, many reasons why a baby in the past might live only 1 day. How could you know now if it is deliberate or just the terrible healthcare of the past?
Yes like queen anne ..she had 17 babies only 3 survived beyond a few days and they all died of something. God love her. I dont know what she had but something ..they did say she had inbreeding too.
I find the trouble with archeologists is they always go for the most dramatic explanation, (it makes it more interesting, more exciting, and more newsworthy). A brothel? Child infanticide? Pornography? Pretty extreme guesses when it can all be explained by more typical, mundane occurrences.
I’ve always thought that being sent to Gran Britannia was a very unpopular posting for most Roman soldiers, bearing in mind the climate…compered to what many would have been used to in the Mediterranean areas.
Considering trade has been a thing for longer than history, those coins might as well been traded. The same has happened here in Germany. the limes wasn't a locked down barrier, but a frontier that could be defended against raids. But traders and travellers could pass.
Some Romans staying after the empire withdrew only makes sense. Some soldiers probably fell in love with native women and had children. Some probably fell in love with the land and the locals. Some may have been running from their past. There's any number of reasons why some would want to stay.
We are from the U.S. We visited the Binchester Roman fort in Sept. 2023. We walked up the unmarked road to the site and were the only tourists there for awhile. I would like to see Binchester grow and offer tours by trained archaeologists. Durham University has a good archaeology museum specializing in the underwater finds by Gary Bankhead.
Theres only really the money to develop one or two of the wallforts and Vindolanda and Chesters have more developed sites. Unlikely Binchester (which is actually quite remote) will get further developed.
Another fascinating and informative episode, hosted by the ever mesmeric Prof. Alice Roberts. Although initially produced a little while ago now, the archeological evidence and conclusions drawn at the various sites are completely relevant today. The excitement is in what will continue to be discovered as the excavations are expanded !!!! Thank you for uploading this very satisfying series :)
I was thinking that this program itself almost qualifies as ancient history. I live in Folkestone, and it must be fifteen years ago that they last dug up Jock's pitch. (The local name for that part of East Cliff.) Alice is looking very young, too. 😁
@@sarkybugger5009 Indeed, but as I mentioned above, I am well aware of a significant passage of time since this episode was created, but in terms of ' history ' it was only a minute ago !!!!!! It would be of some help if more current archeological digs could be uploaded, as new and exciting forensic technology, ladar scanning and dna analysis has contributed to a significant increase in the understanding of material emerging from the various dig sites, although up to date information is always available through a variety of web sites :)
I don't, I might be interpreting history through the lens of contemporary ethics but I find it hard to believe that a mother just abandons her stillborn at the maternity ward. Then there is the point that Roman culture saw the dead as unclean so cemeteries had to be located outside a town's pomerium (ritual boundary) which makes it hard to believe that dead babies were buried next to an aesculapium (healing temple) or some kind of obstetrician's practice.
3 infant burials neonates on a Romano British site (farmstead). 2 each in a round grave cut both almost crouched, Another in the bottom of a ditch. Explain that? @@JerehmiaBoaz
@@brenda1378 The pomerium marks the part of a town or a city that's legally and ritually part of (the city-state of) Rome itself. Anything outside the pomerium is territory conquered and occupied by Rome, for which other rules and laws apply. A farmstead wouldn't normally be inside the pomerium.
Interesting what that guy at 52:19. Arrested developments in babies. They didn't say much other than suggest they were poorest of the poor possibility. However, there is another possibility that could have been an autoimmune disease. My grandmother, (whose parents came from Birmingham, England...of course not during this content era). Her dad and 4 of his brothers ALL died from nephritis. My grandmother birthed 12 babies that we know of, but she likely suffered from at least one autoimmune disorder. 4-5 children from infancy to 2-4y/o died from FAILURE TO THRIVE. Which they blamed the mother for not taking care of them. But this failure to thrive is just one of the symptoms of a genetic kidney disease. I am 63 and it has taken the medical field 59 years to diagnose Distal Renal Tubular Acidosis and 63 years and my nephrologist to order a renal gene study to find that I have FOUR kidney diseases. I think it was three of these genetic disease that cause 2 anemias, degenerative joint disease, rheumatoid arthritis. But the curious one that makes doctors scratch their head, is my vitamin and minerals more times than not are so low they think the cause is domestically caused, or I'm not eating enough to make my food stretch on my budget. Its the immune diseases. 63y/o and I am suffering from failure to thrive!! Well, yes and no, but caused by the 3 of 4 kidney diseases. So maybe these babies had failure to thrive, but not at the hands of anyone person and from any economical environment. However, poverty would likely contribute if their mothers had poor diets while under Roman rule.
I wish there was a genetic test that could prove this. The clinical diagnosis of “failure to thrive” is too vague and even doctors during the Victorian era documented this in the death certificates of those who passed in the workhouse. You really might be into something here! Personally I have a degree in forensic science and even then we didn’t discuss long historical cases such as those in the Roman times. We had bones from the Victorian era who’s “owners” (as it were) had tuberculosis, however nothing like acute renal failure. One wonders how many people over the centuries have suffered from this and it’s been reported by the coroner at the time as something they didn’t understand. I’m sorry it’s take so long to get your diagnosis and I hope there is something that can be done to help you!
Isn’t it sad that you are struggling financially when you should have had your state pension at 60? I’m one of those ladies that had 7 years pension stolen and the reason given? They wanted to make women and men pension age the same when we still don’t have pay parity with men. I think that the Tory party, well known for its even handedness, must have made an error by omitting to inform us about 7 year pension grab. Have you tried asking the Citizen Advice if your entitled to any benefits because of your severe health condition, I’ve found them very helpful. Good luck.
I struggle with autoimmune issues too. My doctor has prescribed B-12 injections because when I take the vitamins, B-12 doesn’t get absorbed for some reason. Maybe you’re suffering from some kind of malabsorption rather than malnutrition. Something to maybe ask your doctor about?
Absolutely. Like queen anne who had some genetic thing and had all her 17 babies die. All of them! I think 3 lived beyond a few days. A family of isolated rómáns could have been inbreeding and having a lot of babies dying. Could just be one families tragedy. I wish they had done dna to see if they were related or say what age they were. Did i miss that? I've been waiting for them to say but they just say infant.
From a silversmith perspective--those cross bow brooches are a LOT more work than the bangle-shaped ones. If the economy followed roman power decline, there would be much less disposable income for labor-intensive peices, and pin makers would have produced more affordable pieces, the bangle shaped or C-shaped designs.
A birthing and family planning centre? Given mortality rates of the age and that they practiced infanticide, I think they the number of infant burials starts to seem less shocking. That they were found all in one place is what makes it seem sinister. But a cemetery attached to a female health centre could explain that.
I'm pretty sure the idea of a birthing center is anachronistic to Roman times. The idea of having babies anywhere but at home has been a very modern one in this scale of history.
Definitely not Swedish. I've known her from way back when she was the finds officer for Devon. I think she originates from the Bolton area. @@christopherlawley1842
What an amazing and revealing programme! Fabulous finds and wonderfully filmed and narrated. I thought that the object at 30:50 looked very similar to a pommel of a gladius Roman sword. Thanks for this, amazing work, lovely scenery and great background music as well!
People have an unlimited capacity for sexual pleasure, but a quite limited capacity for raising multiple children. Just as abortion is a big issue today, I'm sure that not all pregnancies were greeted with joy in the past. As it is today, reproductive decisions were a matter of economic necessity and even a question of survival. Hard choices had to be made...and still do.
It shouldn’t be hard choice. Modern medicine has made it an extremely easy choice. We know that all it takes is a contraceptive or abstaining for 5 days out of the month and you are nearly guaranteed that you will not have a pregnancy until you choose to have one. We have the option to “turn off” fertility until we choose to be fertile. It’s not fair to compare modern women to women who lived during those times who actually had difficult choices to make.
When I think of Devon or Cornwall, TIN comes to mind. Surely, the Romans must have known that and had a significant presence in the area as a consequence.
Hello 👋🏼 In her book Buried, in one of the last chapters, she mentions the use of tin in the area. If you haven't already, you should give it a read or listen, it's very very good! 😌
Thank You Prof. Alice Roberts... The graveyard, the bodies, I was wondering. I thought the Romans cremated? England certainly did not have a shortage of wood? Why ?...TM
I'm personally put off by all British accents (personal bias), but I do agree that hers is more agreeable than most. It's pretty mild compared to others.
We attended the Folkestone site in Roman reenactment kit on an open day. An American told one of our reenactors that Roman soldiers never came to Britain.
I don’t know why, but the host of this show is exactly what I envision when I think of a Princess. Her mannerisms, her speech, her smile, her hair. Everything just screams what I’d expect royalty to be like. Though I know it isn’t.
I come from a country that never had royalty, so that never occurred to me. Does she project that to you when she's doing the "extreme archaeology" digs where she's wading in mud, on a zip line over a river, rappelling down a cliff side or diving underwater? I don't know if I'm picking up on what you're picking up on, but she strikes me as someone I'd watch over if she were my neighbor. I'd bake treats and bring some over. I'd keep an eye on her deliveries and keep porch pirates away.
She (Alice Roberts) is a professor at a top university, has a solid background in anatomy and teaching, has been a presenter for history programmes for several decades and is an all round good egg. Oh, and a passionate Humanist
When I first heard her voice, I thought it was Nikki, the presenter on Escape to the Country shows. Both ladies have similar accents. Do you know where this type of accent originates from?
@@kathleenmartin7498 I'd say it is what is now called 'Received Pronunciation' or standard English with little or no regional accent. It isn't posh, it isn't 'working class' etc, it is just the way more and more people are speaking - blame the internet, schools and television
Anybody read up on the dig at Ashkelon? At the Roman level, a 'bawdy house' was discovered and at a nearby drain was found newborn skulls and a few bones. DNA testing was performed and the young ones were overwhelmingly male in number. The researchers knew reports of Roman infanicide and considered this likely proof of the practice. Caught this years ago in the Biblical Archaeology Review.
Not sure how old the Dr is, but she exudes a youthful energy & excitement that makes me want to watch until the end. I can tell she truly loves what she does! I’m hooked! ❤
Tje soldiers left as they were needednto fight on the continent. The locals took over the areas. Tired of hearing the long proven flase line that the romans turned out the lights when they left
The overlapping copper-alloy discs with the Mithras head is NOT armour. Roman armour scales are never attached that way, and for good reason. What it is far more likely to be is the ritual costume of one of the ranks within the Mithras cult, each of which had its own distinctive costume. The probable shimmering effect mentioned in the programme would work well with the torches needed within the normally subterranean temple to Mithras.
Great show! As a Historian I find it interesting that Archaeology doesn't appear to have adopted the more modern time notations of BCE and CE (Before Common Era and Common Era).
So the villa was the property of classic britannica, an organisation rather than an individual? I do have doubts about the “high status individuals” who seem to often crop up in the dialogue. This may well have been an organised lookout, an important role for the Roman organisation in Britain.
Classis Brittanica. The prefect were individuals of the Senatorial class and legati augusti pro preatore. Much more high class is not possible in Roman society and just like an general today they had to live somewhere as needed their staff. So this was the HQ.
Waiiiit a minute. Was that bit about the ford across the Thames used as an excuse to get film of the good Doctor walking about in a wetsuit? Her swimming in the water added nothing of substance.
From what I read and it could be all wrong, Roman infants had to be claimed by their father, if not accepted they were exposed to the elements and left to die, Rome was supposed to have a special hill to dump kids on to be scavenged by predators. If this is true and these Romans followed that practice in Britain there would be no bones buried to be found later. I like the idea of a birthing facility, if the infants were full term still births I can see them just being shoved into the ground if they were not considered as fully human before surviving to a certain age. When you have many children and the mortality is high, I can understand not investing a lot in a child until it has proven it is robust enough to survive.
The babies and infants may have succumbed to childhood contagious diseases enmasse such as Measles or Scarlet Fever. Today we underestimate the ferocity of these outbreaks. Many bacteria and virus' causing childhood illnesses can pass through the placenta resulting in miscarriages and stillbirths. Just as with modern day Covid 19 we should consider this site as a possible sanitorium, quarantine or medical refuge...
Love all these sorts of shows bringing back such important periods of the life of Britain. THERE should be a lot more ,They are far more interesting than most of the rubbish sob stories that are on,
6:01 looks like the young archeologist took a knock to the bonce? Those digging trowels can be dangerous. 21:25 could the site be a birthing centre or a brothel? Sounds like an airport, arrivals and departures.
Many 'Roman' soldiers were conscripts from all over Europe. When the Empire receded, some probably thought they had nothing to go back to, so decided to stay and make a life for themselves here. Hence the adopting of celtic clasps etc and dropping the roman style. The dead babies thing I have seen before, and it was said it was a brothel. Their bones were discovered in an excavated Roman sewage system.
my brain just decided to ask, did folk then have archaologists? and if they did , where did the records go? who's going to be finding us in future if not cremated?. everyone i know including myself are opting for cremation to not be any financial burden.
I would’ve had liked to have heard mention of what Roman Chronicles said about the withdrawal from Britain and the number of Roman soldiers left behind. The Roman military machine kept fantastic records of everything that it did. So I think that there could be a way to verify, at least somewhat, how many soldiers stayed put when the army left Britain.
Call me crazy but I’m more inclined to believe that what is there is more of a naval academy of some kind, than one man’s home. A school or academy used to train the sons of Nobel families as commanders and leaders for Caesar. Just letting my imagination run wild. The brothel theory fits the housing of many young men for training. They would require entertainment.
I agree it was unclear whether the thing happened before they were buried, or after they were found. I'd suggest "What had happened" would make it clearer that the event was pre-burial.
Can I just make a previous observation. You commented, that the battle,of culloden, was between the scots and England. Not true, it was between, a British hanovarian,army and a jacobian army,made up of scots english and French.
The reason that Rome had to constantly expand was due to erosion of farmland through the centuries. By the time of Christ, Rome was importing all of its food from North Africa and Egypt.
They were known to sacrifice babies back then to their pagan gods, especially when they were in trouble, but maybe even in hopes of a good harvest. Keep that in mind as a possibility. Also if a baby wasn't wanted 8t could be left to die 😢
Babies and children were a disposable product back then. And an inconvenient baby, well, it may have been a blessing for them to have life cut short. It was a cruel time, love and caring for children then was in short supply
If the babies were killed -would the romans have bothered to bury them? The ‘maternity ward’ idea seems to fit better -that the babies died and were buried to protect their bodies from scavengers.
I wonder if the cuts on the infant bones may be from shovels when new infants were buried after old ones. Not that that rules out infanticide. While watching the last episode the 97 infants were mentioned, I was wondering if a midwife was operating at that location and burying still births, but then dismissed that idea since I thought a midwife would travel to the pregnant lady, not the opposite (obviously this is all just speculation).
It should be easy to find out about the babies. If there are lots of half siblings, it's a brothel. If there are no or few siblings, it's a birth center.
