Health and Social Status of Children in the Late Roman Timacum Minus

Abstract

Timacum Minus is a Roman fortification and settlement in Eastern Serbia dated from the 1st to the mid-5th century AD. One of its necropolises is situated on the eastern slope of Slog Hill. There were two horizons of burial at this necropolis – Late Roman, from the mid-4th to the mid-5th century (phase I: 350–380 AD; phase II: 380–410 AD; phase III: 410–450 AD) and Early Medieval, from the 8th to the 11th century. In the periods 1994–1996 and 2013–2015, 113 Late Roman graves were excavated at Slog, 28 of which were children’s burials. Although the human osteological material was extensively decomposed due to the acidity of the soil, to the point that a large number of bones were missing, we tried to reconstruct the health status of the discovered children in Timacum Minus in the 4th and 5th centuries. This paper will discuss diseases which directly left traces on the osteological material and diseases that left no visible marks on the bones, but may indeed have been the direct cause of death of children in Timacum Minus. In order to properly interpret the data collected by anthropological analysis, it is necessary to know the additional causes of child mortality and take into consideration the archaeological and historical background as well.