The Tiniest Burials: Fetal Burial and Personhood During the Late Roman Period in Egypt

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mortuary practices surrounding fetal-aged individuals are highly variable, providing opportunities for examining complex beliefs about personhood, social identity, and “wholeness” from cross-cultural and chronological perspectives. This paper examines the mortuary context of the unborn, or those individuals entering the mortuary landscape because of miscarriage, premature birth, or other factors within the Kellis 2 cemetery, in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. The unique hyper-arid environment has allowed for excellent preservation of human remains and evidence of bodily and funerary treatments. This cemetery represents early Romano-Christian mortuary practices where all individuals, regardless of age, were buried in a consistent mode of bodily treatment and placement in the landscape. Ten percent of the Kellis 2 juvenile population (46/463) are aged younger than 36 weeks of gestation, suggesting the death and treatment of these individuals had a meaningful impact on the lives of remaining family and within the cultural norms of the community. This context provides a distinctive and uncommon view into early Christian burial practices and how ideological beliefs about personhood extended across different levels of society. Images of human remains will be shown in this presentation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39411.0