Terrible secret of Roman brothel finally uncoveredThe ancient Judaism connection:
(Henley Standard)
THE rediscovery of infant bones has led to a Hambleden field being identified as the earliest proven site of infanticide in Britain.
An excavation of Yewden Villa at Mill End in 1912 found a number of unusual discoveries, the most startling of which was the remains of 97 newborn babies.
The theory that the villa was used as a Roman brothel has also gained weight after the latest archaeological findings.
A H Cocks, former curator of Buckinghamshire County Museum, noted the discovery but focused on the tonne of pottery that was also found.
The remains of the infants, buried between 150 AD and 200 AD and all the same size, were rediscovered in cigarette boxes at the Aylesbury museum in 2008.
Dr Jill Eyers, director of Chiltern Archaeology, pushed for extensive investigation into the bones, which has confirmed beyond doubt that each baby was killed shortly after birth.
“Refinding the remains gave me nightmares for three nights,” said Dr Eyers. “It made me feel dreadful. I kept thinking about how the poor little things died. The human part of the tale is awful.”
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“Because there was so much trade coming through, they had a little brothel operating.”
There was no such thing as abortion then — the best option was an ointment designed to kill sperm which didn’t work. Dr Eyers said there would have been no place for babies for women who had gone down the road of prostitution. She discounted her colleague’s theory of a birthing centre having been at the site.
“I wanted that as well, as I didn’t want them to have been killed, but it just doesn’t work,” said Dr Eyers.
“There has never been a birthing centre in the Roman empire anywhere in the world and this is an unusually high number of burials.”
Her suspicion that the infants were systematically killed because they were unwanted births has been confirmed by Simon Mays, a palaeontologist who has spent the past year measuring the bones.
Dr Eyers said: “He proved without doubt that all the infants were new-born. They were all killed at birth and all at the gestation period of between 38 and 40 weeks.
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Dr Eyers noted striking similarities between Yewden Villa and a site in Ashkelon in Israel, which archaeologists have concluded was also a brothel.Background, with support for a different interpretation of the evidence, is here.
UPDATE (1 September): Judith Weingarten directs me to Dead babies still are bad evidence for a Roman brothel , by Rosemary Joyce at the Ancient Lives, Ancient Bodies blog, which responds to that recent BBC article and supports that different interpretation of the evidence.