deities, to guard the child's soul on its journey. Cemeteries containing an unusually high number of infant and child burials could indicate a nearby shrine or sanctuary, since lost, where parents had sought divine intervention and healing for children who had died despite their efforts. Cemeteries with disproportionately scant material evidence of infant or still-born deaths have been interpreted as confirmatory evidence for a general lack of care, or a culture of emotional indifference to the very young; this apparent lack may have more to do with soil conditions unfavourable to the preservation of infant remains, carelessness in past excavations, and over-reliance on the opinionated and unreliable pronouncements of elite literary sources as a guide to contemporary practice, and thus to the planning of later excavations. In Roman Britain, many burial and cremation sites of infants who had teethed and died contained small jet bear carvings, lunulae and phallic symbols, beads, bells, coins, and pottery beakers. In the Graeco-Roman world, the bear was an animal of Artemis (or for Romans, Diana), the divine virgin huntress and patron goddess of wild animals, protectress of childbirth, nursing and infants, especially infant girls. In Brescia, Italy, bear figurines appear to have functioned as guides and companions for children in the afterlife. The lunula, and the phallus with a horn invoked protection from evil and misfortune. Beads found in burial sites were often made from materials used for medicinal purposes in the realm of the living, such as jet, which Pliny claims in his Historia Naturalis can cure toothaches and other ailments. Bells, epecially tintinnabuli helped to drive away evil and avert the evil eye. Bells were also set into the mortar of the Roman Catacombs as a protective device over children's tombs. This was especially common in the fourth century. Commemorations The care and cultivation of the dead did not end with the funeral and formal period of mourning, but was a perpetual obligation. Cicero states that the main and overriding function of the priesthood with respect to the dead accorded with universal, natural law: to keep alive the memory of the deceased, by holding the traditional rites. Ancient votive deposits to the noble dead of Latium and Rome suggest elaborate and costly funeral offerings and banquets in the company of the deceased, an expectation of afterlife and their personal association with the gods. As Roman society developed, its Republican nobility tended to