Barry 
When archaeologists excavated a drainage channel beneath a Roman bathhouse at Ashkelon, they expected broken pottery, animal bones and the usual residue of a typical bustling Roman city. What they found instead were human remains so small that, at first, they were almost missed. The infant burials at Ashkelon would go on to haunt every archaeologist unlucky enough to excavate them.
But we aren’t talking about just a couple of small fragments of human remains. It was worse than that.
Tiny ribs. Vertebrae. Thigh bones. As they dug deeper, infant skulls began to emerge from the soil. One bone could have been an error, a bone that somehow was swept up in the general rubbish of the city. Finding ten small, infant skeletons would have been very unusual and would certainly stop any archaeologist in their tracks. But one hundred infant skeletons? That is something else.
Ashkelon had given up one of the most disturbing deposits in the Roman world.
The Roman City of Ashkelon
Located on the south coast of Israel, the Roman city of Ashkelon was a bustling port. Maritime traders would flood into the city, Roman officials maintained law and order, and it was an urban settlement full of life.
But this busy picture never tells the whole story of what can occur in such a city. The story we see on the surface can often be different from the hidden reality. After all, you would never expect a pile of infant skeletons to be discarded in a drainage system. That seems barbaric and cruel in nature, especially when the bathhouse itself contained elegant and ornate stonework. A building to be clearly proud of.
Yet below the hot rooms, cold rooms, steam rooms and pools covered in ornate tiles lay a channel. A channel that was filled with remains of infants who had clearly only lived for days. Infants who were discarded and forgotten about.
Discovering this creates a difficult reality that has to be faced. Ancient society was brutal. Infant death was high, but we often miss this type of evidence as we only unearth the occasional body. Just finding one is easier to comprehend. Discovering 100 makes it different. It’s the death of infants on a massive scale.
Ashkelon matters because it highlights this fact. Women gave birth, and many babies didn’t make it beyond a couple of days. Yet, we know this happened, so why were the remains placed in such a horrific place? A drainage channel at a bathhouse?
The Excavation at Ashkelon and the Discovery
The Ashkelon excavations began in the 1980s as part of the Leon Levy Expedition. Large areas of this ancient city were excavated, and uncovering the bathhouse should have been straightforward. In Roman times, the bathhouse was a focal point of society, and at first, the excavations were on track.
Hypocause pillars were unearthed, revealing the heating system, floor tiles, broken masonry, and the usual finds you would expect from a bathhouse, but the discovery of the first tiny human bone changed everything.
For the archaeologists, the sheer number of neonate remains left them unsure as to what they had discovered. Season after season, they kept on uncovering human remains. What should have been a simple bathhouse excavation turned into a site where bone experts and a strong mind were essential. After all, excavating human skeletons is very personal, but excavating infants who were only a few days old is on a different level.
Small human bones changed the tone of the excavation almost instantly.
Why So Many Infant Burials in Ashkelon?
A problem with archaeology is that some can be swayed by the emotions stirred by discoveries. With this mass grave of infant burials, early interpretations were also shocking in nature.
Some believed the infants were there because the bathhouse was also a brothel. The theory was that these infants were the unwanted children of the women working in the brothel and they disposed of them in the drain to get rid of them.
This could make sense, but it’s too neat as an explanation. Also, when archaeologists went back and looked at the evidence for a brothel, there was none. The site had no markers or finds that indicated a brothel had ever existed.
The reality was that the bathhouse gave up the bones but tried to keep its secret about what was going on.
The Scientific Evidence Tells Us More
Almost all of the infants discovered at Ashkelon were newborns. Their bones were at such an early stage of their development that bone experts were able to determine most of the infants had only lived for a couple of days. Some may have only lived for a matter of hours.
But the bones told us even more. The infants had no sign of healed trauma, and there was no disease. The skeletons had no evidence of anomalies that may have led to a strange cluster of natural deaths.
Also, radiocarbon dating placed the skeletons in the late Roman period. Archaeologists also studied the drain, and they discovered that it was still active when they were placed there. It means the Roman city of Ashkelon was still very active, so the infants were not left there as the city collapsed.
Excavations uncovered a total of 97 bodies. The actual number is probably higher. Neonate bones are so small and fragile that it would be very easy for archaeologists to miss them amongst the mud and sediment. They were also not all dumped there at the same time. This was not an isolated event, but something that happened over and over again.
A Drain Became Their Final Resting Place
One of the more disturbing aspects is that this was not a cemetery. It was not some Roman shrine or an older burial area that was somehow forgotten and built over.
This was a drain that was fully functional below a very public building that would have been in constant use. People would sit there in the bathhouse, washing, talking, and socialising, yet below their feet were the remains of all those newborns.
Bathing was important in Roman times. People were hygienic and would have water poured over their tired bodies. But they were doing this while there was a slow accumulation of dead infants in the dark, damp drain.
These were infants discarded. They had no markings. They were never wrapped in any cloth to at least give them a shred of dignity. They were thrown into a drain, like the rest of the city’s waste.
Just think about the difference in how Roman society viewed things in this one site. The bathhouse was an engineering marvel. It was designed to be functional and was a major focal point of the city. Everything about it was precise, and it was built for comfort.
Contrast that with the disposal of infants. They were the children of the city’s residents, but they were thrown away and forgotten.
It’s not even as if the Romans were callous with burials. That didn’t happen, but for some reason, they didn’t value these infants. They had cemeteries, so why did they not do the decent thing and bury the infants there?
The drain was not a burial space. It wasn’t organised. It’s a place where no human remains should ever be found. In this instance, the horror of the site does not come in the form of violence, but rather the complete disregard for human beings. They repeated this behaviour over and over again and appear to have carried out the act without a second thought for the dead.
What Do the Experts Say?
This is one of those sites where the experts involved will probably never agree on the reasons behind the burials. This site was uncovered in the 80s, and 40 years later, there is still no consensus.
But here are the two main competing theories. See which one sits most uneasily with you.
High Infant Mortality
The ancient world had a high infant mortality. It was just a fact of life. At times, it would perhaps have been expected, so there was less of a shock when it happened, and people were numb to the experience.
According to this theory, experts believe the drain was simply a quick dumping site. It’s almost as if they didn’t see them as humans because they died so soon after birth.
Abandoning Infants
The other leading theory is that people abandoned infants. It was a socially and legally acceptable practice where infants were abandoned shortly after birth. There are numerous Roman texts that mention this act. However, the texts do not go into detail as to what happened to the infants when they were abandoned, but you can guess it wouldn’t end well if a day-old infant were just left.
Both theories can be possible, but one thing that is certain is that these babies were not killed violently, and they were also not given a formal burial. This makes it more unsettling and chilling.
The Haunting Discovery
The mass infant deposit at Ashkelon remains one of the most haunting archaeological finds of the Roman world. It is precise in its measurements, secure in its dating and irrefutable in its presence. Yet the reasons behind it continue to elude us.
The infants left no names, no tokens and no stories. All that survives is the silent pattern of their bones in a channel that once carried wastewater to the sea. Archaeology often reveals the monumental. Here, it reveals the intimate and the discarded.
Ashkelon exposes a part of Roman life that the written record preferred to keep quiet. It forces us to acknowledge the children who lived for only days, yet who have shaped one of the most discussed deposits in late Roman archaeology.
They were hidden once. The excavation ensured they were no longer hidden.
