Communities of Care at the Phaleron Burial Ground Understanding Early Childhood Health Care in Archaic Attica

Abstract

This article extends a bioarchaeology of care model to care for infants and young children interred at the Phaleron Burial Ground in Attica, Greece (ca. 700–480 B.C.) and investigates the impact of child care and health care on social relationships within the household. Four case studies are presented that explore how caregiving of children living with scurvy and other comorbidities at varying stages in the life course would have affected household social dynamics.

Our results reveal that not only did children interred at Phaleron survive extended periods of potentially debilitating illness, but also their survival would have been impossible without a community of cooperative agents facilitating their care. Moreover, contrary to previous assumptions that health care of young children would not have been noticeably different from daily childrearing of healthy children, this study demonstrates that age would have significantly impacted the types of health care needed and the burdens placed on the household. Not only does this study provide a framework through which childhood health care and its social impacts can be explored at multiple scales, but it also underscores the emotional impact of child care and loss on the communities that buried their deceased at Phaleron.