What Happened To The 97 Infants Buried Below Yewden Roman Villa? | Digging For Britain
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- Опубликовано: 28 июл 2024
- The remains of 97 babies were discovered during the excavation of a Roman Villa; Professor Alice Roberts is on a mission to find out what happened to them. Meanwhile, archaeologists excavate a Roman Navy commander's villa on the cliffs of Folkestone, facing imminent destruction. Unearth forgotten towns, amphitheaters, and late Roman buildings, weaving a captivating tapestry of history.
00:00 Intro
02:00 Roman villa
10:15 97 Infants
21:45 Lost Roman town
28:45 Caerleon Roman Amphitheatre
35:30 Religious Roman finds
40:55 How did these people die?
43:10 Last days of Roman Britain
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52 minutes never wasted with Dr Alice .
You like her so much, why don't you just marry her then?!
Love alice, she makes archaeology so interesting.❤
We are from the U.S. We visited the Binchester Roman fort in Sept. 2023. We walked up the unmarked road to the site and were the only tourists there for awhile. I would like to see Binchester grow and offer tours by trained archaeologists. Durham University has a good archaeology museum specializing in the underwater finds by Gary Bankhead.
love these videos. Dr Roberts is an amazing presence. Fantastic presentation.
No matter why there were women at the stie giving birth, the years given between 150 and 200 means that there were potential 50 years for those 97 babies to die. That is barely 2 a year! With death rates are birth very high, that seems like a LOW number! If it was a maternity/mother goddess center, they were doing good work!
B
Brothel.
It it was a maternity center, wouldn't there be women buried there? 🤔
Yes, well said.
This is what I was also considering.
@@scottdiamond74 Why, they go there to give birth if the baby lives or dies they go home.
Another fascinating and informative episode, hosted by the ever mesmeric Prof. Alice Roberts. Although initially produced a little while ago now, the archeological evidence and conclusions drawn at the various sites are completely relevant today. The excitement is in what will continue to be discovered as the excavations are expanded !!!!
Thank you for uploading this very satisfying series :)
I was thinking that this program itself almost qualifies as ancient history. I live in Folkestone, and it must be fifteen years ago that they last dug up Jock's pitch. (The local name for that part of East Cliff.) Alice is looking very young, too. 😁
@@sarkybugger5009 Indeed, but as I mentioned above, I am well aware of a significant passage of time since this episode was created, but in terms of ' history ' it was only a minute ago !!!!!!
It would be of some help if more current archeological digs could be uploaded, as new and exciting forensic technology, ladar scanning and dna analysis has contributed to a significant increase in the understanding of material emerging from the various dig sites, although up to date information is always available through a variety of web sites :)
Exciting to see a young Danni!---Lindsey Davis got so many things right in her historical fiction books.
Thanks Alice for another informative bit of history of your island. 🥰😀
Brilliant and wonderful Dr Robert’s presentation is incredibly informative and entertaining
A birthing and family planning centre?
Given mortality rates of the age and that they practiced infanticide, I think they the number of infant burials starts to seem less shocking.
That they were found all in one place is what makes it seem sinister. But a cemetery attached to a female health centre could explain that.
What an amazing and revealing programme!
Fabulous finds and wonderfully filmed and narrated. I thought that the object at 30:50 looked very similar to a pommel of a gladius Roman sword.
Thanks for this, amazing work, lovely scenery and great background music as well!
I cannot help to think of the life of a prostitute in the Roman era - falling pregnant not knowing who the father is and knowing there is a possibility of the baby dying when being born or killed - it is heartbreaking
This is so exceptional, thank you.
An artist’s representation of the armour would have been interesting to look at.
Very interesting, thank you for posting.
A Roman Magdalena Laundry! Poor babies, poor mothers.
I thought the same thing.
Nice seeing Miles and Dani and Peter.
Considering trade has been a thing for longer than history, those coins might as well been traded. The same has happened here in Germany. the limes wasn't a locked down barrier, but a frontier that could be defended against raids. But traders and travellers could pass.
You’re right, coins travel. Sometimes a very long way.
So the villa was the property of classic britannica, an organisation rather than an individual? I do have doubts about the “high status individuals” who seem to often crop up in the dialogue. This may well have been an organised lookout, an important role for the Roman organisation in Britain.
Classis Brittanica. The prefect were individuals of the Senatorial class and legati augusti pro preatore. Much more high class is not possible in Roman society and just like an general today they had to live somewhere as needed their staff. So this was the HQ.
There are slightly less horrible events that could, explain the trove of infant remains, that don't require deliberate intent: if it were near a brothal, the deaths could be linked to stillbirth and late-term abortions due to disease. It's still seen in farming in significant numbers of 5 to 10% of sheep pregnancies for example. It doesn't even have to be a venereal disease, many of which can cause infant death. Many insect-born viruses can contribute to outcomes that look perfectly formed to the untrained eye.
Alice love your programes facinaiting to me love it thankyou
This show. this host. these stories…is why I am getting a VPN.
Good one. Thanjs.
Fabulous, thank you!
When I think of Devon or Cornwall, TIN comes to mind. Surely, the Romans must have known that and had a significant presence in the area as a consequence.
Hello 👋🏼
In her book Buried, in one of the last chapters, she mentions the use of tin in the area. If you haven't already, you should give it a read or listen, it's very very good! 😌
They were there for the minerals and the farming to feed their army!
I’ve always thought that being sent to Gran Britannia was a very unpopular posting for most Roman soldiers, bearing in mind the climate…compered to what many would have been used to in the Mediterranean areas.
brilliant presentation
my brain just decided to ask, did folk then have archaologists? and if they did , where did the records go? who's going to be finding us in future if not cremated?. everyone i know including myself are opting for cremation to not be any financial burden.
There will always be burial’s though, a lot of cultures cremate their dead and have always 😊
I wish with all the study of history we would all learn from our past . I'm trying my best . But hard to see history constantly repeating.
We do learn from history,but the problem is that the constant is we are still human. Therefore falable.
97 babies dying over 50 yrs for that time is not that many!
Thank You Prof. Alice Roberts... The graveyard, the bodies, I was wondering. I thought the Romans cremated? England certainly did not have a shortage of wood? Why ?...TM
Not always !
As a plus this episode also includes an early sighting of Danni Wootton circa 2011.
She kinda looks Swedish
Dani Wootten popped up on Time Team occasionally way before 2011.
@@christopherlawley1842, She isn't. 🙂
Definitely not Swedish. I've known her from way back when she was the finds officer for Devon. I think she originates from the Bolton area. @@christopherlawley1842
I am not surprised that the Romans (or perhaps "Romans") stayed on after the fall of the empire.
Roman was more a political, economic and cultural system than an ethnicity. Roman soldiers were drawn from all over the empire, and generally posted to places where they didn't have family or tribal connections. Once they'd served for long enough to get a pension (in the form of a land grant) they often stayed where they were posted, rather than returning to where they came from. I suspect that in many cases they would have acquired a local wife and they would have a circle of local friends (perhaps sons of other Roman soldiers, retired soldiers, Romans who plied a variety of non-military trades and professions, and so on). Over time even the locals became Romanised. So, by the time the Roman empire gasped its last, the "Romans" in Britain probably would have seen staying on as a logical move.
There were also the questions of how the Roman soldiers would get the fares to go back to where they came from and also the issues of political and economic instability in those places. All of that would make quietly earning a decent living in a formerly-Roman fort/town a much more attractive proposition.
Great Chanelle 😊
I love Alice’s Bristol accent, for some it’s perhaps a put off, but not for me..
Put off? Her posh accent is very clear and soft. I’m put off by Essex accent, scouse and Yorkshire but not her accent
i found a gold roman signet ring on the beach there in 2015
Still have it?
If it could talk it would say leave me alone u plebeian
Nice!
I must admit I like the idea of a maternity hospital. Childbirth before modern medicine was perilous to both child and mother.
Or 'compromised' temple priestesses.
I don't, I might be interpreting history through the lens of contemporary ethics but I find it hard to believe that a mother just abandons her stillborn at the maternity ward. Then there is the point that Roman culture saw the dead as unclean so cemeteries had to be located outside a town's pomerium (ritual boundary) which makes it hard to believe that dead babies were buried next to an aesculapium (healing temple) or some kind of obstetrician's practice.
It still is.
3 infant burials neonates on a Romano British site (farmstead). 2 each in a round grave cut both almost crouched, Another in the bottom of a ditch. Explain that?
@@JerehmiaBoaz
@@brenda1378 The pomerium marks the part of a town or a city that's legally and ritually part of (the city-state of) Rome itself. Anything outside the pomerium is territory conquered and occupied by Rome, for which other rules and laws apply. A farmstead wouldn't normally be inside the pomerium.
Interesting and accessible
I procured a Roman Slave Tag a week ago. Game pieces, deco belt attachments., Segmeta ( Roman armor) etc..seller in York.
To this day we live in houses built after the Roman model - tiled roofs, rectangular floor plans, bricks, plaster.
When I visited Butsa reconstructed village it was remarkable how much wealth was invested in the Roman villa there, whereas the British round houses were much much easier to put together and were so much warmer and easier to repair. Roman architecture is cold and draughty and expensive. Cultural inertia is profoundly robust.
Interesting what that guy at 52:19. Arrested developments in babies. They didn't say much other than suggest they were poorest of the poor possibility. However, there is another possibility that could have been an autoimmune disease. My grandmother, (whose parents came from Birmingham, England...of course not during this content era). Her dad and 4 of his brothers ALL died from nephritis.
My grandmother birthed 12 babies that we know of, but she likely suffered from at least one autoimmune disorder. 4-5 children from infancy to 2-4y/o died from FAILURE TO THRIVE. Which they blamed the mother for not taking care of them.
But this failure to thrive is just one of the symptoms of a genetic kidney disease. I am 63 and it has taken the medical field 59 years to diagnose Distal Renal Tubular Acidosis and 63 years and my nephrologist to order a renal gene study to find that I have FOUR kidney diseases. I think it was three of these genetic disease that cause 2 anemias, degenerative joint disease, rheumatoid arthritis.
But the curious one that makes doctors scratch their head, is my vitamin and minerals more times than not are so low they think the cause is domestically caused, or I'm not eating enough to make my food stretch on my budget.
Its the immune diseases. 63y/o and I am suffering from failure to thrive!! Well, yes and no, but caused by the 3 of 4 kidney diseases.
So maybe these babies had failure to thrive, but not at the hands of anyone person and from any economical environment.
However, poverty would likely contribute if their mothers had poor diets while under Roman rule.
I wish there was a genetic test that could prove this. The clinical diagnosis of “failure to thrive” is too vague and even doctors during the Victorian era documented this in the death certificates of those who passed in the workhouse. You really might be into something here!
Personally I have a degree in forensic science and even then we didn’t discuss long historical cases such as those in the Roman times. We had bones from the Victorian era who’s “owners” (as it were) had tuberculosis, however nothing like acute renal failure. One wonders how many people over the centuries have suffered from this and it’s been reported by the coroner at the time as something they didn’t understand.
I’m sorry it’s take so long to get your diagnosis and I hope there is something that can be done to help you!
Isn’t it sad that you are struggling financially when you should have had your state pension at 60? I’m one of those ladies that had 7 years pension stolen and the reason given? They wanted to make women and men pension age the same when we still don’t have pay parity with men. I think that the Tory party, well known for its even handedness, must have made an error by omitting to inform us about 7 year pension grab. Have you tried asking the Citizen Advice if your entitled to any benefits because of your severe health condition, I’ve found them very helpful. Good luck.
48:30
THAT!! ❤
Just so beautiful.
6:01 looks like the young archeologist took a knock to the bonce? Those digging trowels can be dangerous.
21:25 could the site be a birthing centre or a brothel? Sounds like an airport, arrivals and departures.
I would’ve had liked to have heard mention of what Roman Chronicles said about the withdrawal from Britain and the number of Roman soldiers left behind.
The Roman military machine kept fantastic records of everything that it did. So I think that there could be a way to verify, at least somewhat, how many soldiers stayed put when the army left Britain.
Was that Phil from Time Team I spotted? :)
Yeah! Time team! I'm so happy
Why isn't Dr. Alice Roberts the host for The Time Team!? Make it happen Time Team. Please. Cheers
I kept thinking, during this program, about the poor farmer who now has no rights to his own land.
Homie at 5:50 got in a fist fight like 10 minutes before filming. Respect.
I find it somewhat funny (in a peculiar way) that they are so almost horrified by the discovery of the babies. Their view of reality during the Roman era is obviously colored by their modern sensibilities. Life was significantly more difficult then than now, and whether disposing of inconvenient children or ritual sacrifice was the reason, it was "normal" then. And if it was a birthing center, the of the total births of the centuries, 97 really isn't that many.
Wow
If the babies were killed -would the romans have bothered to bury them? The ‘maternity ward’ idea seems to fit better -that the babies died and were buried to protect their bodies from scavengers.
I don’t know why, but the host of this show is exactly what I envision when I think of a Princess. Her mannerisms, her speech, her smile, her hair. Everything just screams what I’d expect royalty to be like. Though I know it isn’t.
I come from a country that never had royalty, so that never occurred to me. Does she project that to you when she's doing the "extreme archaeology" digs where she's wading in mud, on a zip line over a river, rappelling down a cliff side or diving underwater?
I don't know if I'm picking up on what you're picking up on, but she strikes me as someone I'd watch over if she were my neighbor. I'd bake treats and bring some over. I'd keep an eye on her deliveries and keep porch pirates away.
She (Alice Roberts) is a professor at a top university, has a solid background in anatomy and teaching, has been a presenter for history programmes for several decades and is an all round good egg. Oh, and a passionate Humanist
@@wildrose2748Unnecessary
When I first heard her voice, I thought it was Nikki, the presenter on Escape to the Country shows. Both ladies have similar accents. Do you know where this type of accent originates from?
@@kathleenmartin7498 I'd say it is what is now called 'Received Pronunciation' or standard English with little or no regional accent. It isn't posh, it isn't 'working class' etc, it is just the way more and more people are speaking - blame the internet, schools and television
Is the location of the newly discovered Roman town in West Devon known?
Crazy people will say that Romans went back to Rome, its like saying the Pellegrins from America returned to Britain.
Many 'Roman' soldiers were conscripts from all over Europe. When the Empire receded, some probably thought they had nothing to go back to, so decided to stay and make a life for themselves here. Hence the adopting of celtic clasps etc and dropping the roman style. The dead babies thing I have seen before, and it was said it was a brothel. Their bones were discovered in an excavated Roman sewage system.
The overlapping copper-alloy discs with the Mithras head is NOT armour. Roman armour scales are never attached that way, and for good reason. What it is far more likely to be is the ritual costume of one of the ranks within the Mithras cult, each of which had its own distinctive costume. The probable shimmering effect mentioned in the programme would work well with the torches needed within the normally subterranean temple to Mithras.
is there any other Roman settlements in Britain or elsewhwere displayed simliar discoveries?
If history were taught in this manner at schools our world would be much better off
I imagine the landowners would be upset about the archeological activity, but I’d be begging to “help out” every day.
Why would the landowners be upset? These sites all appear to be research-based digs, which are 100% voluntary for a landowner to participate in. No excavations take place in the UK without the permission of the landowner.
97 deaths are nothing if over the course of 75 years 10,000 babies were born there. If indeed it was a brothel there might be more signs of traffic and trade for that purpose ; I'm voting for the idea of a birthing "clinic "
Could also be a place for young girls or unmarried women to have their babies in secret.
Over 50 years, it's only 2 babies a year and that doesn't sound like very much at all.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I assume the dna might tell you blood type. My grandmother had 10 pregnancies and only 5 adult surviving children. 4 babies died within 24 hours of birth due to RH factor. Also one died as an infant from "bloody flux", which I don't know the current name of. So many, many reasons why a baby in the past might live only 1 day. How could you know now if it is deliberate or just the terrible healthcare of the past?
Poor grandma
💞💞
Binchester may be like Birdoswald where the Roman garrison also remained and lived during the fifth century.
Ah Binchester. Where time team found the street of the dead
Could the cut marks be animal in origin? Possibly digging in the area?
Thank you for the very good info. Come to think of it, as per the muslim in britain, they will be the majority in say 30 to 50 yrs from now. I can't imagine how this video will look like, with the anchor speaking with their turbans and balalaikas. And the archelogists and volunteers where ...
Roman road…. I keep hearing that the Romans buried legionaries by the road.
"They _LOST_ 97 bodies?!"
My reaction to the title.
I agree it was unclear whether the thing happened before they were buried, or after they were found. I'd suggest "What had happened" would make it clearer that the event was pre-burial.
Tje soldiers left as they were needednto fight on the continent. The locals took over the areas. Tired of hearing the long proven flase line that the romans turned out the lights when they left
So sad for all those little ones. One day we shall know the truth of this.
some ones got a right shiner.
The reason that Rome had to constantly expand was due to erosion of farmland through the centuries. By the time of Christ, Rome was importing all of its food from North Africa and Egypt.
There's nearly 900 in Tuam
Interesting th u
What is so bloody annoying is the advert literally 10 seconds into the program.
The fisher(man) was Jesus. Anyone who wore this brooch, was identifying themselves to others, that they were Christians, followers of Jesus and His teachings.
Can I just make a previous observation. You commented, that the battle,of culloden, was between the scots and England. Not true, it was between, a British hanovarian,army and a jacobian army,made up of scots english and French.
From the first time I saw this, I got the idea these graves might represent pregnancy terminations. After live birth 😢😢😢
which region is the narrator from (by accent)?
Bristol.
The leaps they make to disprove it was a brothel.
Romanes eunt domus!
One coin for each child.
From what I read and it could be all wrong, Roman infants had to be claimed by their father, if not accepted they were exposed to the elements and left to die, Rome was supposed to have a special hill to dump kids on to be scavenged by predators. If this is true and these Romans followed that practice in Britain there would be no bones buried to be found later. I like the idea of a birthing facility, if the infants were full term still births I can see them just being shoved into the ground if they were not considered as fully human before surviving to a certain age. When you have many children and the mortality is high, I can understand not investing a lot in a child until it has proven it is robust enough to survive.
People have an unlimited capacity for sexual pleasure, but a quite limited capacity for raising multiple children. Just as abortion is a big issue today, I'm sure that not all pregnancies were greeted with joy in the past.
As it is today, reproductive decisions were a matter of economic necessity and even a question of survival.
Hard choices had to be made...and still do.
It shouldn’t be hard choice. Modern medicine has made it an extremely easy choice. We know that all it takes is a contraceptive or abstaining for 5 days out of the month and you are nearly guaranteed that you will not have a pregnancy until you choose to have one. We have the option to “turn off” fertility until we choose to be fertile. It’s not fair to compare modern women to women who lived during those times who actually had difficult choices to make.
Not all pregnancies today are caused by lack of protection, sexual violence is still a big issue
@@martynan7553 less than 0.01% of unplanned pregnancies are due to medical or violence.
Alice’s hair is much more subdued in this production than in most of her earlier ones. I think I kinda like the earlier (younger) bright red.
I prefer the hair here, didn’t like her red purple hair
I like both.
I doubt you can dig a hole in your yard without hitting some archaeology! 🙂
I don't know you tell me
Some Romans staying after the empire withdrew only makes sense. Some soldiers probably fell in love with native women and had children. Some probably fell in love with the land and the locals. Some may have been running from their past. There's any number of reasons why some would want to stay.
I think it was probably a house for women who wanted to hide their pregnancies.
Whether because they weren't married or were mistresses or too young.
If this was over 50 years 2 babies per year isn't that much.
If it was an unwanted baby which died there it would be buried there, if the mother and baby died because of complications then the mother's body would be sent back to the family and the unwanted child would be left there.
Could also be a bit of an abortion hospital. The only babies that we still have evidence of are the older, more developed ones.
I don't think it's a brothel, but a type of a 'hospital' makes sense.
I think I am in love with Alice. ❤
You'll have to take a number.
What a nice looking historian she is 🥀
Werrnt the children various ages?? If they had a policy if killing babies out of a brothal, they would have all been infants. They werent tho. Maybe they were sacrifices.
I thought he said in the previous program that they were all roughly the same age. 40 weeks.
Prove they existed with solid evidence. Then prove how old they are.
Springtime starvation was a continuing problem until the 20th century. This would result in the regular lines on the 9 year olds bones.
Caused by infections and serious illness
To appease the constituted who's babies are being killed to clear out the problems of mothers wishing to deal with their kids rather than working.
Give them the impression their children will be cared for in the afterlife by Juno!
5boys and 5 girls i believe the odds of picking5 girls and 5 boys equally even if the whole sample is half half the chances are1 in 1800
Infanticide was important in those days to limit the amount of babies. Babies caused more hardship on the poor and/or to protect the mother from dying in childbirth leaving behind a score of babies w/ no one to care for them. Fathers were often not in the picture leaving women to go it alone w/ a series of unwanted babies, therefore they were killed at birth. It was a necessity as it is now in modern times. Not everyone wants babies.
Evidence please. This is just an assumption based on your peronal.opinion.
Christianity must have been very different in the Roman period, if it tolerated paganism, cause that's basically it's main vendetta, is to stamp out paganism, and is to this day..
It should probably have a rethink about that and switch its priorities towards Islam.
@@MrRoz121 How 'bout not having any vendettas and just being about peace? I think christianity would fall apart if it tolerated anything. Because it would become agnosticicm, or humanism. What's christianity without salvation, and you can't be saved if there's nothing to be saved from.
@@brightphoebus yeah good luck with trying to be peaceful with a religion that’s only priorities are to convert the entire planet by any means possible violent or not.
That’s why one is the fast grown and the other is not. Time to step up again and push back.
I love how you got on a wetsuit and pretended like you were helping or even taking a look down in the water, when your hair then isn't wet when you get out, haha. Cmon girl, if you're gonna get in the water go all the way! XD Great video though