IT WAS a tough life in Roman Britain and it seems that hard-pressed natives
killed some of their newborn children to reduce the strain on family resources.
But the first detailed genetic study of infant remains from the period suggests
that perhaps the victims weren’t just baby girls.
Simon Mays from the English Heritage Centre for Archaeology in Portsmouth and
Marina Faerman from Hebrew University in Jerusalem studied 31 infant skeletons
found at two English sites where they believed Britons practised infanticide.
They wanted to test the old assumption that it was mostly baby girls who were …