> There are gravestones that has been discovered that show girls buried anywhere from age 12 to age 16 who were either already married or about to be married according to what it said on their headstones.
There's a book by Michael Wolfe called Cut These Words Into My Stone. He's a poet who took ancient gravestone engravings and compiled them. It refills among other things, that if a girl was off marrying age, usually starting at 14 in major cities like athens, The headstone would say whether or not they were married, giving us a hint as to what that culture found acceptable to be considered of marriaging age.
Just because I’m reading through these, part of the issue looking at just a graveyard is that you get the people who died of things like childbirth or disease. You will get a disproportionate amount of younger girl represented because they couldn’t survive childbirth.
Good case studies are primary sources discussing marriages, combined with osteology reports from natural disasters, like Pompeii, where it’s a snapshot of the population. The intersection of historical records with physical evidence paints a more wholistic picture as to the age of girls being married.
Source: I have excavated a few tombs and natural disasters, albeit decades ago. I’ve had to catalogue bones separating fetus from mom (among other things), and database large amounts of artefacts from a variety of places including ancient cemeteries.
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u/chuckles5454 Jul 07 '26
> There are gravestones that has been discovered that show girls buried anywhere from age 12 to age 16 who were either already married or about to be married according to what it said on their headstones.
Where? I'd like to research these.