Resumen de Assemblages of children's bones in a Medieval chuchyard in Sweden: Results of epidemics, warfare, infanticideor simply, disturbed graves?
A Cristian churchyard in Sweden dated to AD 1200-1400 has been subject to new archaeologicaland anthropological analyses. A total number of 371 individuals were interred in Westerhus, of these32% died before the age of 1 and 62.5% before 20 years of age. The high death rate of infants has beenclaimed not to be representative of a rural, Medieval population in the Nordic area.Six assemblages of bones with several individuals involved have been scrutinized. The collectionscontain bones from 6, 10, 11, 14, 22 and 23 individuals respectively. The aim was to build up atheoretical scheme to facilitate the analysis of the bone assemblages and to answer weather or not thedeaths had occured simultaneusly and/or the burials had taken place simultaneously.The age composition and the completeness of the buried individuals were investigated. Further, theexistence and amount of traces of violent trauma are compared to other temporary sites. The dating andthe position of children graves in the churchyard were also accounted for. The questions raised wereenlighted by the present study but seem difficult to solve without access to more information on thearchaaeological excavation.
