Perinatal infant death at the Roman villa site at Hambleden,Buckinghamshire, England

The aim of the current work is to investigate whether perinatal infant burials at Hambleden Roman villa (1st–4th century AD), England, more likely represent infanticides, as has been contended by earlier workers, or natural deaths. Previous work has noted that when infanticide is practiced it is normally carried out immediately after birth and so will produce an age at death distribution tightly clustered around the gestational age of a full-term infant. By contrast, natural deaths in the perinatal period produce a rather flatter age distribution. In foetal and perinatal infants, long-bone length bears a close relationship to gestational age. The distribution of age at death in the Hambleden perinatal infants is compared with those from Roman Ashkelon, Israel, where earlier work showed evidence for infanticide, and Mediaeval Wharram Percy, England, where previous studies demonstrated a perinatal age at death distribution consistent with natural deaths. The comparisons between the sites are undertaken using four different methodologies: direct comparison of distributions of long-bone lengths, and comparison of ages at death estimated using two different regression methods and using a Bayesian methodology. Results consistently show a strong clustering in the Hambleden age distribution at an age approximately corresponding to a full-term infant. In this respect they resemble results from Ashkelon and differ from those from Wharram Percy. This was interpreted as supporting the suggestion of infanticide at Hambleden.