Infant Burials at Plaxtol

Have you noticed how those special features and finds never reveal themselves until you have decided, for at least the fourth time, that the next digging day will definitely be the last?

This phenomenon visited itself on me in the latter part of last year during the final days of the 'Villa Aprilis' (Newsletter No's 11 & 15).

My conscience had been pricking me for some time because I had not persuaded myself or anyone else to complete the clearance of the small room at the North-east corner of the building. It was the arrival of the cooler weather which finally convinced me that digging that area was preferable to plan drawing.

I made a start in the North-west corner of the room and everything was perfectly straightforward for the first 30 cm. or so. Then I disturbed what appeared at first to be a very thin piece of wood but turned out on closer inspection to be a piece of bone. Not just any old bone but skull bone.

I had begun to be a little doubtful about finding the infant burial or burials which seems to be a common feature in Roman villas but there seemed little doubt that the piece of skull was human and too curved to have belonged to an adult. I turned my mind to the best method of excavating so small and fragile a find.

It was well into the afternoon and I knew that I would not be able to remove any of the bones until the police had been notified and given the go-ahead but I needed to be able to expose the upper surface of the bones without disturbing them. Clearly a trowel was going to be much too big so I sent out an S.O.S. for a plasterers' leaf which I had borrowed for a delicate task in the past. No luck. O.K., so what could anyone offer me in the way of delicate tools? A dental probe! You know the thing I mean; a metal handle with something that looks like a gramophone needle set at 90 degrees. Perfectly harmless except in the hands of a dentist! It takes a little time to adjust to digging with something that has as much effect on clay as a teaspoon has on shifting Mt. Everest but by the end of the day I had exposed the surface of the larger bones. The displaced bones were deposited with the local police with a description of the circumstances of their discovery and two weeks later I was able to resume work with the knowledge that in the opinion of the Forensic Pathologist the skeleton was not recent and was probably of a child of no more than 18 months of age.

With the aid of the dental probe, the plasterers' leaf and two paint brushes I began to record and remove the bones, keeping a rough mental note of those I could recognize. I was not worried about the number of very small bones; fingers and toes come out in lots of bits but the finding of the third femur struck me as odd.

To cut an already too long story short I recorded and removed the skeletons of two infants, one buried on top of the other, the lower one being slightly larger. I discovered quite a few people who had always wanted to excavate a skeleton suddenly went off the idea, that wearing three sweaters and a jacket makes little difference to body temperature when you are only moving one wrist and that artists palette knives are almost as useful as dental probes.

My thanks to the suppliers of the various tools, advice, cups of coffee and moral support that kept me going, and to Roger Cockett for giving me the chance to broaden my digging experience.

Sara Bishop