[Deaths at an early age in the city of Quebec, 17th-19th centuries]

Archaeological excavations carried out in two ancient cemeteries (1657-1844) of Notre-Dame-de-Québec Basilica in old Québec City allowed us to analyze the skeletal remains of more than 175 children who died before they were 10 years old. The proportion of infants is higher than expected according to the parish registers presumably because archaeologists recovered the remains of infants whose death had not been recorded in the registers. Two peaks of mortality have been noted: among the newborns and between one and two years old. The observed bone lesions lead us to believe that prenatal stress and rickets might be responsible for these high mortality rates. Although the samples from the two cemeteries were contemporaneous and drawn from the same community, there are some significant differences from the morbidity and mortality standpoint, tentatively attributed to the fact that most of the children recovered from one of the cemeteries were the victims of an epidemic while those from the other cemetery died in normal circumstances. This study shows how the analysis of skeletal remains can shed light on pathological conditions which otherwise would remain undocumented and how paleoanthropology opens new perspectives of research on diseases and death in the past.