Children of the Barbaricum: Short Lives, Early Deaths on the Eastern fringes of the Roman world

Children have vulnerability to morbidity and mortality, which in turn influence the social structures around these especially susceptible periods.

The study of past childhood frailty and survival is still very much relevant today, especially for children from the “edges”.

This project examines the health status of the Sarmatian children from the Barbaricum—the area beyond the Roman frontier.

The written sources of classical antiquity paint the Sarmatians as nomadic people of the steppes between the Ural Mountains and Don River who migrated west and settled in the Carpathian Basin and on the Great Hungarian Plain, occupying parts of modern Romania and Hungary for over four hundred years.

While the Greek and Roman authors described these populations as skilled equestrian warriors, hostile and destructive, caught in a cycle of war and peace with the Roman Empire, little is known about the biocultural challenges their children had to face living in the Barbaricum during the Roman Age.

By utilizing interdisciplinary investigations, this project integrates data, models, and theories from bioarchaeology, archaeology, palaeoproteomics, growth and development, and ethnohistory in order to: deliver a life course approach to children’s health; offer a bio-culturally informed perspective on gendered differences in direct and structural violence; and reconstruct dietary habits at different life stages, as children transition into socially adult roles with the onset of puberty.

According to the WHO, “Of the 5.2 million deaths that still occurred among children < 5-years of age in 2020, many were concentrated in vulnerable populations […]”.

By adopting a life course approach within a biosocial framework, the project hopes to highlight how the past can inform the present and hopes to show how work carried on precious, ancient, tiny bones and teeth could contribute to the global efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents today.