Blood is thicker than baptismal water: A late medieval perinatal burial in a small household chest

Abstract

The interment of stillborn infants in later medieval burial grounds stands at odds with Catholic Church Law, which forbade the inclusion of unbaptised children within consecrated ground. When perinatal remains occur within graveyards, their interpretation can be problematic. Did they live to be baptised, or do such examples represent clandestine burials? Historical documents indicate that some parents disobeyed the Church and secretly buried their offspring within consecrated ground. Proving such actions in the archaeological record, however, is another matter. This paper therefore investigates the discovery of a perinatal burial (Sk953) within a rural graveyard at Poulton in Cheshire, England, placed in a small household box. A multifaceted approach was used to interpret the varying strands of evidence. These comprised church law, the birth, container, orientation of the corpse, local topography, date of burial, and status of the graveyard when the infant was interred. The authors interpret the evidence as characteristic of a clandestine burial, and a rare expression of grief and love visible in the archaeological record.

New Prospects for Investigating Early Life-Course Experiences and Health in Archaeological Fetal, Perinatal and Infant Individuals

“…The role and agency of the fetus and infant are now being investigated and questioned more thoroughly from both an anthropological and archaeological perspective (see the edited volume by Han, Betsinger, and Scott (2018) for further discussion) with studies examining the material culture of infancy, epigraphic and literary references, and interpretations of the funerary treatment afford in death to these individuals, all aiding our ability to comprehend these past lives (e.g. Carroll 2011;Harper 2018;Dunne et al 2019;Cootes et al 2021;Maltin et al 2021). However, though we know that older children maintain their own agency, the agency and physical impact that fetal and infant individuals exerted on past populations is substantially more limited.…”