New archaeological research from Sicily reveals how breastfeeding continued well beyond infancy in an ancient Greek community, offering a rare insight into family life 2,400 years ago.
In the ancient Greek city of Himera, breastfeeding could continue until children were approaching their fourth birthday. Yet new archaeological research suggests that while families shared certain childcare traditions, there were considerable differences in how individual children were fed.
The study, published on 19 October in the European Journal of Archaeology, examined the diets of children who lived in the Sicilian settlement during the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Researchers found that breastfeeding was gradually reduced over several years, with other foods introduced from around three to four months and weaning typically completed between the ages of three and a half and four.
Led by anthropologist Laurie Reitsema of the University of Georgia, alongside Abigail Shahar Gancz, Stefano Vassallo and Britney Kyle, the research offers a perspective on ancient Greek childhood rarely found in historical accounts. Rather than relying on written descriptions of how children should be raised, the team examined physical evidence of how they were actually fed.
The researchers analysed carbon and nitrogen isotopes preserved in the bones of 58 children and adolescents and 27 adult women recovered from Himera’s cemeteries. These chemical markers provide evidence of diet, allowing scientists to investigate the transition from breast milk to other foods as children grew.
Breastfeeding produces a recognisable chemical signature because infants receive their nutrients through their mothers’ milk. As children begin consuming other foods, that signature gradually changes. By examining these patterns and applying statistical modelling, the researchers estimated when breastfeeding was supplemented and when it eventually ended.
The findings indicate that breast milk remained part of children’s diets for several years, even after other foods had been introduced. Importantly, the research does not suggest children were exclusively breastfed until the age of four. Rather, weaning was a prolonged process in which breast milk and other foods were consumed alongside one another.
What makes the discovery particularly interesting is that families did not appear to follow an identical timetable. Although a general pattern emerged, the researchers identified considerable variation between individual children, suggesting that feeding practices reflected both shared traditions and decisions made within individual households.
Himera provides a fascinating setting for exploring these differences. Founded by Greek colonists in the seventh century BC on Sicily’s northern coast, the city developed within a region influenced by Greek, Phoenician and indigenous Sicilian communities. Its population reflected a mixture of cultural backgrounds, raising questions about which customs families maintained and which they adapted.
Archaeologists have investigated more than 13,000 burials at Himera, revealing extensive information about the city’s history, conflicts and burial traditions. The lives of its youngest inhabitants, however, have received comparatively little attention.
Among the discoveries are nearly 500 small pottery vessels traditionally identified as baby bottles, known as gutti, recovered from graves. One child’s burial illustrated in the study contained such a vessel alongside a lamp and other pottery objects.
Their presence is intriguing, although the researchers caution against assuming they were necessarily used for infant feeding. Similar vessels have also been discovered in adult burials, suggesting they may have carried symbolic or ceremonial significance.
The skeletal evidence provides a different kind of insight. Unlike objects placed in graves, the chemical composition of children’s bones can reveal aspects of their diets during life.
The researchers found that children’s diets differed from those of adults, with evidence suggesting they consumed proportionally more plant-based foods and less animal protein. These differences remained apparent until approximately nine or ten years of age, indicating that dietary distinctions between children and adults extended well beyond infancy.
The findings also offer an interesting contrast with surviving ancient medical literature. Greek physicians such as Soranus and Galen, writing centuries later during the Roman period, recommended shorter breastfeeding durations than those estimated at Himera. Their advice, however, cannot be assumed to reflect the everyday practices of families living in earlier Greek settlements.
The research raises broader questions about the transmission of customs across the ancient Greek world. Similar patterns of prolonged breastfeeding have been identified at Apollonia Pontica, a Greek settlement on the Black Sea coast, despite the considerable geographical distance between the two communities.
For the researchers, these similarities suggest that some childcare practices may have been shared across Greek settlements, even as families adapted to different cultural and social environments.
The findings cannot establish why individual mothers breastfed for different lengths of time. Household resources, maternal responsibilities, health and personal circumstances may all have influenced those decisions, but the archaeological evidence does not allow researchers to determine the precise reasons.
Nor does the study establish whether prolonged breastfeeding improved children’s health or survival. The findings are based on skeletal remains from ancient cemeteries, meaning the individuals examined cannot necessarily represent every child or family in the wider population.
Nevertheless, the research reveals something that conventional histories of ancient Greece rarely capture. Within a community shaped by different cultural traditions, families appear to have shared certain approaches to feeding their children while retaining considerable variation in how those practices were followed.
The result is a more personal understanding of ancient Greek life, one in which the everyday decisions surrounding infant feeding offer insight into the experiences of mothers, children and families whose stories were otherwise largely absent from the historical record.
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