Intact Roman child's sarcophagus found in Romania, clay toys still inside
Archaeologists from the Museum of National History and Archaeology in Constanța opened it on 27 October: inside was a wooden coffin with clay toys, bronze ornaments and flower garlands from about 1,800 years ago. It is rare because no one had looted it; the study has only just begun and there are no conclusions yet about the child.
It is a small stone box, the size of a child. When the museum team in Constanța, Romania, lifted the lid on 27 October, they found a wooden coffin inside, several clay toys, bronze dress ornaments and the remains of flower garlands.
The sarcophagus turned up during a preventive dig in the Flămânda district, on the northern edge of the necropolis of Tomis, the Greek and later Roman city beneath modern Constanța. Archaeologists Constantin Băjenaru and Cătălin Nopcea suspected on 22 October that it was intact; it was lifted out and taken to a museum store to be opened.
Untouched since it was sealed
Initial observations date it to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The burial itself is not unusual; what is rare is that it arrived unlooted, with the grave goods where they were left. “Small sarcophagi used for the burial of children are extremely rare, and we have never found anything like this here before,” Băjenaru told a press conference on the 28th, according to the Agerpres news agency.
It lay beside an ancient road linking Tomis with Histria, near other graves that suggest to the archaeologists an important family.
A window onto 1,800 years ago
Archaeologist Ana Hamat compared it to Pompeii and Herculaneum: Tomis has no untouched city, but it does have “these windows into the past”. The museum will look after the child’s remains and will probably put them on display once the analyses are done.
The research has only just started. What can be said about the child, their age and their family will come from those studies.
