engleski

Infanticide or expected child mortality? The curious abundance of babies in the Iron Age necropolis of Kopila hillfort, Korčula, Croatia

Most archaeological sites yield few sub-adult remains and when recovered they are often too poorly preserved for analysis. A lack of children in the archaeological record has limited our perspective on variation in human growth and development and the history of children in the past. In this context, the abundant collection of remains excavated from a Late Iron Age, Illyrian necropolis on the island of Korčula, Croatia is a remarkable resource and the high representation of children is somewhat curious. Often, large deposits of infants from Classical Antiquity and the Iron Age Mediterranean are controversially interpreted as the byproduct of infanticide. This study estimates age at death for 1177 isolated teeth from three tombs via assessment of dental development using Moorrees’ and Irurita’s systems, as well as Liversidge’s tooth length regression formulas. The resulting relative age profiles are employed to test the null hypothesis that these assemblages are the result of typical mortality rates rather than widespread infanticide. Additionally, this study begins investigation into the growth and development patterns of the Kopila sample. The unique size and quality of this sample allow for a refined reconstruction of age at death. Overall, the wide age distribution and formalized deposition suggest that these assemblages are the result of a normal demographic pattern rather than widespread infanticide. These results do not preclude the possibility that some of the individuals included in the deposit were victims of infanticide. Future research will expand on these results with analysis of dental non-metric traits and post-cranial remains.

Kopila, dentition, demography

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