Inhumations de fœtus, nouveau-nés et nourrissons dans les habitats protohistoriques du Languedoc : l'exemple de Gailhan (Gard)

The site of Gailhan contains a number of burials found in what was the heart of the domestic environment. From the interior of the houses, the inhumations of fetuses, newborns and young children include 10 subjects from the last quarter of the 5th century B.C. and 12 or 13 from the first part of the 4th century B.C. These individuals were discovered in anatomical position and excavated according to anthropological methods. All of the skeletal remains were recovered from the excavated section of the site and for the first time during protohistory, the remains of perinatal individuals have been discovered in an extensive excavation. The exhaustive documentation of the architecture, stratigraphy and general archeological context, together with these skeletal remains, permits the visualization of the normal mode of burial of young infants. Further, these data provide evidence of the very high infant mortality during this epoch ; clearly, a difficult time for infants who had low chances of surviving childhood. This synthetic study is interesting in the context of the region. Perinatal remains become more and more numerous during the Iron Age in this same area, due to the greater care taken during excavation of these remains. Conversely however, there is a very important deficit of this age category in contemporary graves. The examination of numerous historic and ethnological examples supports this hypothesis. This practice of infant burial, attested to in recent prehistory, is indigenous to the region.