In recent decades, childhood-centred research has become a steady feature of the modern exploration of Roman society, challenging the centrality of adult-, and especially male- and elite-centred approaches to the ancient world. Anna Rohnbogner's analysis of child heath in Roman Britain takes this approach further in illustrating how the study of bioarchaeological evidence informs not only our appreciation of ancient childhood, but of society more broadly.
Across eight chapters, Dying Young foregrounds the wide-reaching implications of bioarchaeological research of non-adults: surveying the broader archaeological and pathological contexts, Rohnbogner emphasises in her Introduction (1–2) and chapter 2 (3–20) how child health acutely reflects wider societal developments because ‘the heightened responsiveness of non-adult skeletons to changing health and living conditions makes them more sensitive to stress and therefore a more reliable indicator of cultural and environmental stressors’ (8). In chapter 3 (21–32), a survey of earlier palaeopathological research into child health in Roman Britain sits (uncomfortably) beside impressions from ancient literary sources pertaining to childhood (including baffling summaries of Roman child slaving: 31–2). Following overviews of ‘Materials and Methods’ in chapter 4 (33–56), the palaeopathology is analysed in chapter 5 (57–91), supported by 72 graphs, tables and images, and complemented by a résumé of the (seemingly unspectacular) relationship between burial practices and child (ill-)health in chapter 6 (93–4). Chapter 7 (95–117) presents the interpretative discussion of the data. A summary outlook in chapter 8 (119–21) closes the book.
The palaeopathology – including skeletal pathologies, stress indicators and enamel hypoplasia – is based on meticulous research of 1643 individuals from 27 sites, largely late antique, and clustering in south-central England. Much of the material stems from Rohnbogner's primary data collection, augmented by data from the published record (33–5). With due acknowledgement of the difficulties behind locational classification (and the interrelated consequences of inter-site migrations), Rohnbogner categorises over 50 per cent of her data as ‘major urban’ (e.g. Colchester), over 25 per cent as ‘minor urban’ (e.g. Ancaster), and just under 20 per cent as ‘rural’ (e.g. Frocester) (35–47). To mitigate different aging techniques in the secondary literature, wide age groups are employed, from pre-natal to age 17, based on age categories and terminology proposed in earlier scholarship (especially Lewis's Bioarchaeology of Children, 2007), ‘to ensure continuity’ (10). The analysis shows a concentration of deaths in the first year of life, and morbidity only markedly decreasing after age 6 (57; table 5.1). Perhaps surprisingly, rural children pull the shorter straw in many of the pathological categories: active cribra orbitalia, for instance, indicative of iron-deficiency anaemia, shows up to five times more often in the country-dwelling kids (72–5), ‘suggestive of their lower status’ (106); high premature rural birth rates likewise indicate ‘compromised maternal health’ (96), signalling poverty, heavy labour requirements and restricted diets. Comparison with (smaller) data sets from Late Iron Age Dorset (esp. Redfern in JRA Supplements 65, 2007) and eighteenth–nineteenth-century London (i.e. Spitalfields, especially Lewis's Urbanisation and Child Health, 2002) contextualises the observed pathological patterns, from non-specific infections to congenital conditions, rickets and scurvy, tuberculosis and trauma, etc. (86–91): this produces another surprise – namely a seeming decline in child health in the (late) Roman period, with rural children experiencing morbidity ‘even surpassing some of the rates reported from Spitalfields’ (114). Rohnbogner emphasises the ‘food poverty’ (115) among the rural children, concluding moreover that ‘ill-health is a distinctly Roman imperial feature’ (116).
Notwithstanding superficialities in the earlier chapters and the poor proof-reading throughout, the results of Rohnbogner's research encourage a critical take on traditional views of (insalubrious) urban and (wholesome) rural living respectively and the wider contexts that create general health disparities: undoubtedly, social inequalities promoted the kind of embodied inequalities visible in the studied evidence, illustrating how structural violence impacts the population at large. The concomitant image – and critique – of a society in which ‘political, civil and legal matters are deemed more important than the right to food, sound health and education’ (116) by those in power strikingly demonstrates the topic's contemporary relevance, not least to modern British society. But gauging the role of Rome in the underlying processes through comparison of provincial bioarchaeological remains with ancient medical literature (especially 24–9), i.e. of real-life artefacts documenting the many with elite conceptualisations and practices of the few, is bewildering: to deduce Roman child health and care practices, osteological data especially from Italy – not Galen – are the essential comparanda, equipped moreover to dispel the notion of a singular Roman approach from which prior British practices can easily be distinguished. Notably, Rohnbogner's reference to ‘a relatively varied and satisfactory diet based on agricultural intensification and use of wild resources’ (113) to contrast Iron Age from Roman Britain recalls the peasant diet deemed characteristic of Roman Italy – demonstrating the need for a less monolithic view on Roman practices and their impact on provincial society. Rohnbogner's brief reference to Christianity and the growing influence of the Church over land and people points towards another obvious avenue for contextualising the Romano-British child health data (116–17). A further desideratum is a gendered analysis assessing the potentially different impact of diverse living conditions on boys and girls respectively and the broader consequences for our appreciation of Romano-British society.
