July
08
/ 2015
The infant mortality rate was so high in the Middle Ages that half the burials in a deserted medieval English town excavated by archaeologists in the 1980s were of children. The rate of infant mortalities then was about 100 out of every 1,000 live births, compared to the present rate in the United Kingdom of 4 out of 1,000 live births. Archaeologists were excavating at the site of an Iron Age settlement in Basingstoke in the winter of 1984-'85 when they came upon the medieval settlement that included a church, burial ground and various artifacts, says the blog Hampshire Archaeology, which is maintained by county archaeologist Dave Allen. Documentary evidence has revealed that the settlement was the church and ancient
