Traces of Disease in Cremated Children’s Bones: Age and Health in Bronze and Iron Age Communities North and South of the Alps

Diseases are a constant of the human experience and have been affecting past populations of all periods, including those that practised cremation as a dominant burial rite. This paper focuses specifically on children’s health status in the Late Bronze and Iron Age (circa 1500–600 BC) inferred from the osteological analysis of cremated human remains. We have analysed skeletal material from four Croatian (Poljana Križevačka, Slatina, Batina and Sotin) and four Austrian (Franzhausen-Kokoron, Unterradlberg, Inzersdorf, St. Pölten) cemeteries to demonstrate that despite the fragmentation, distortion and selective recovery process of the funerary activities, cremated remains still yield important information on the life and death of children in later European prehistory. Children in the Croatian graveyards were more frequently affected from pathological lesions (38%) than children in the Austrian sample (3%). Cranial porosity, cribra orbitalia, and endocranial lesions dominated, probably related to metabolic diseases such as rickets and scurvy which were noticed primarily in children younger than six years at death. Differences between the Croatian and Austrian samples are likely associated with taphonomic processes as indicated by differences in bone weight and fragmentation size. Since children are the most vulnerable part of communities, a focus on children’s morbidity and mortality can elucidate the living conditions of prehistoric societies as a whole.