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Many aspects of the medical history of the ancient Mediterranean world remain unclear. For many conditions, especially genetic, texts are missing and human remains are scanty. We must rely essentially upon iconography to throw some light on the pathological forms existing in the past, as well as on ancient medical notions. In this paper, I take the example ofrestricted growth, commonly called dwarfism, a condition characterized by a significantly short stature, over three standard deviations below the mean height of a population of the same age and sex.2 The causes of growth disorders are extremely varied (endocrine, metabolic, nutritional), but most types of short stature are due to genetic mutations, which suggests that the birth incidence of dwarfism should be similar in all societies throughout known human history.3 The occurrence of the most common disorder, achondroplasia, is of one mutant baby in 34,000 live births, or, ifwe include related types, of one in 10,000. When the disorder is due to a dominant genetic mutation, as in achondroplasia, if one parent is

Long believed to be a transitional time that left no trace, birth and early childhood have recently emerged as a new field of research. Interdisciplinary approaches have demonstrated that coming into life has a complex and rich history of its own in classical antiquity, involving important issues relating to the history of medicine, religion, family and gender studies. New impulses also came from the results obtained for other periods and societies, allowing useful transfers of questioning on various topics, from the function of babies' "molding" to fosterage relations. In this chapter we will analyze a series of key themes in a comparative way, highlighting similarities and specificities, in search of the many-folded perception of young children in Greek and Roman antiquity. The extent of comparison is uneven because of the lacunary and changing nature of evidence in each culture. Textual sources relating to that first stage of life are limited: infants were mainly in the hands of women, who left almost no direct written evidence. We will also concentrate on freeborn and mostly elite children, as nothing or very little is known about lower-class ones and those born in slavery. Traces of children in material culture (feeding bottles, amulets, toys, etc.) partly compensate the paucity of literary sources, but the interpretation of objects from various contexts (funerary, votive, domestic, etc.) is often still a matter of debate.

The study of infant feeding practices in archaeological populations can aid in the understanding of cultural attitudes towards dietary choices and how specific circumstances experienced by mothers and their offspring influence childhood health and survivorship. Breastfeeding and weaning patterns have received increased interest in Roman bioarchaeology, especially through the application of stable isotopic investigation of nitrogen (δ 15 N) and carbon (δ 13 C) values. This study presents the stable isotopic results of the first Roman bone sample analyzed from Switzerland (30 non-adults and 9 females), allowing us an unprecedented insight into health and diet at the site of Aventicum/Avenches, the capital city of the territory of Helvetii in Roman times (1 st-3 rd c. AD). The fact that the majority of the non-adult samples subject to stable isotope analysis were perinates, highlights the complex relationship between their δ 15 N and δ 13 C values and those of adult females, as different factors, including variation of fetal and maternal stable isotope values, the possible effects of intrauterine growth, as well as maternal/fetal disease and/or nutritional stress (e.g. nutritional deficiencies such as scurvy, parasitic infections, such as malaria), could have influenced the observed elevated δ 15 N values.

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