Baby deaths link to Roman 'brothel' in Buckinghamshire

bbc. ^ | 25 June 2010

[JoeProBono]

Archaeologists investigating a mass burial of 97 infants at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley believe it may have been a brothel. Tests on the site at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire suggest all died at 40 weeks gestation, very soon after birth.

Archaeologists suspect local inhabitants may have been systematically killing unwanted babies.

Archaeologist Dr Jill Eyers said: "The only explanation you keep coming back to is that it's got to be a brothel." With little or no effective contraception, unwanted pregnancies could have been common at Roman brothels, explained Dr Eyers, who works for Chiltern Archaeology.

And infanticide may not have been as shocking in Roman times as it is today. Archaeological records suggest infants were not considered to be "full" human beings until about the age of two, said Dr Eyers.....

[TexasFreeper2009]

liberals...

proudly killing babies since Roman times.

[FrdmLvr]

Fall of the Roman Empire.

[craigster_nc]

lol!

[GeronL]

bump

[GeronL]

lol.

I think Helen Thomas was young in those days

[SunkenCiv]

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[GeronL]

bump

[wildbill]

Today it could be a letter from a Chinese soldier to his wife about following the ‘one child per family policy” of the People’s Republic.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

[Habibi]

“Even if this means a full-on civil war and 50 million dead leftist vermin.”

Have you ever considered converting to Christianity?

[Soothesayer]

“Have you ever considered converting to Christianity?”

Many many times and it never happened.

[Nowhere Man]

I remember reading a letter from a Roman soldier in the field to his wife in Rome. He asked how she was doing in her pregnancy and that if the baby was a girl, to kill it, but if a boy, let it live. He said it as casually as telling her how to pay the cable bill.

There is a side of me that wishes I had a time travelling DeLorean so I can go back in time and find this guy. I'd like to go up and whoop him on the side of the head and say, "hey, doofus, you need both girl and boy babies to bring about the next generation." Plus you have the moral/ethical issue of infanticide as well.

[colorado tanker]

identified as a high status Roman villa

That doesn't strike me as a "brothel" especially out on the fringe of the Empire in Britain. This is a ways from London or another population center, so I'm thinking a "high class" high-volume brothel isn't the explanation. Infanticide was practiced in pre-Christian Rome, but why so many on this villa? And why "under" walls and structures? I suspect a different explanation. They all appear to be newborns. Was a population being punished? Perhaps in relation to the rebellion? Was there a famine or epidemic and decision to get rid of all newborns? We don't have any data as to age. Were these burials over a period of centuries? If so, maybe the number isn't so shocking.

BTW, it looks like a charming little village.