childhood (Other Keyword)
1-25 (34 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Women’s Work: Archaeology and Mothering" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The investigation of mothering naturally parallels that of childhood in archaeological literature. Arguments for the status of women as the last colonized population and childhood as a colonial construct make looking at mothering in colonial contexts compelling and necessary. In Spanish and British colonial Yucatán, it can be difficult...
A Bioarchaeological Approach to Demographic Patterns and Preadult Deaths in the Andean Late Intermediate Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During eras of heightened, intergroup conflict, noncombatants may experience increased risk of death, either as a direct result of targeted killings or from more indirect means stemming from resource stress and inadequate nutrition, for example. Documenting whether changes in mortality during violent time periods deviate from expected demographic patterns...
Black Toys, White Children: The Socialization of Children into Race and Racism, 1865-1940. (2016)
Race and racism are learned. While there has existed a myriad of social practices that have been used to socialize individuals into ideologies of race, this paper details the use of material culture directed at children, that is automata, costumes, games and toys. This paper focuses on material culture from the 1860s-1940s depicting Africans/African Americans. These objects produced, advertised and purchased by adults from children’s play served three purposes; 1) to cultivate ideologies of race...
The Can: Clandestine Infant Burials in Plain Sight (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Things Remembered II: An Archaeology of Affective Objects and Other Narratives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Mortuary treatment in a capitalist society can be cost-prohibitive and a source of shame or guilt for those unable to pay for a proper burial. Coroner reports from Milwaukee County describe the recovery of miscarried, stillborn, or infant remains from outdoor locations, often concealed...
Categorizing and Analyzing Age: Historical Bioarchaeology and Childhood (2016)
While bioarchaeologists are able to estimate age from the remains of children into narrow ranges, they often avoid dividing childhood into categories based on these age estimates. Children then end up lumped under just a few categories, or even a single category, "child." While this is prudent in cases where chronological and cultural age cannot necessarily be matched, historical bioarchaeology gives us a unique opportunity to examine historical records and further refine how we categorize,...
Changing with the times: An exploration of shifting attitudes and funerary treatment of children from the Roman to early medieval period in Britain (2016)
Throughout Britain, archaeological cemeteries and settlements are being increasingly subjected to in-depth site analyses. Large scale excavations and subsequent post-excavation work result in large bodies of osteological and artefactual data which, in turn, allow archaeologists to glean an insight into the social identity of past populations. Biocultural studies that specifically focus on the treatment and attitudes towards children living in Romano-Britain (1st-5th century A.D.) and early...
Child Burials and Figurines at a Terminal Classic Maya Household, Ceibal, Guatemala (2017)
The ancient Maya center of Ceibal is known for a florescence during the Terminal Classic period (c. AD 800-900), a time when most cities in the region were in decline. Excavations at the Karinel Group, a residential complex, have focused on the site’s Preclassic origins. However, an elite household also occupied the area during the Terminal Classic period. The residents built four house platforms around a patio, had access to high-status goods, and took part in crafting activities. Along the...
Childhood Gender Diversity and Transgender Medicine in Philadelphia, PA (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) (2018)
This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. As transgender and gender-nonconforming identities become more visible in medicine, policy, and the media, gender affirming medical care is increasingly seen as acceptable and necessary. Yet while childhood gender has long been the subject of clinical research, the impact of specialized medical care on young people and their families is poorly understood. Given the racialized and class-based...
"Children in a ragged state": Seeking a bioarchaeological narrative of childhood in Ireland during the Great Famine (1845–52) (2016)
More than half of all victims of the Great Famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 were children, but despite this fact relatively little attention, amongst a vast body of famine research undertaken to date, has been undertaken to explore their experiences and what realities they endured during this period. Following the archaeological discovery and bioarchaeological study of a large famine-period mass burial ground adjacent to the former workhouse in Kilkenny City, the physical experience of this...
The Children of the Ludlow Massacre: The Impact of Corporate Paternalism on Immigrant Children in Early 20th Century Colorado Coal Mining Communities. (2016)
Coal Miner’s lives in Southern Colorado were fraught with violence and hardships during the Coal Wars. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company attempted to assimilate ethnically diverse immigrant employees into American society. One of these methods was to impart American values to the children living in company towns. Archaeological work was conducted at the coal mining company town of Berwind, and at the Ludlow Massacre Tent Colony site. Using archaeological evidence and the historical record this...
The Community of Chase Home: Institutional and Material Components of Children’s Lived Spaces in Victorian Portsmouth (2016)
The Chase Home for Children opened in 1883, housed in an immigrant-rich neighborhood of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Home accepted children, "without distinction of race, creed, or color*" who needed temporary or long-term care and housing. Chase Home was guided by tenants of the Progressive Era and supported solely by the local community, at a time before state welfare was available. In contrast to single religious denomination orphanages typical in Victorian America, or strict reformatory...
Community-Based Explorations of "Schooling" at the Grand Ronde Reservation (2018)
In 1856, members of twenty-seven Bands and Tribes were removed to what today is known as the Grand Ronde Reservation in northwestern Oregon. Like other Indigenous adolescents, children at Grand Ronde were sent to schools driven by assimilationist policies as part of a broader project of Euro-American colonialism. However, unlike many others, they attended school on the reservation, closer to their homes. From the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, five different schools are...
Criminal Boys in a Remote Landscape: The Archaeology of Point Puer (1834-1849), an Experimental Reform Institution in Colonial Australia (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental and Social Issues within Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Criminal children formed a notable proportion of the convict population transported to colonial Australia. During a global shift in the ideology of the treatment of criminal youth, an experimental institution for the training and reform of colonial boy prisoners was established at Point Puer in...
Developing Personhood: The discourse, experience, and material culture of children’s play activities in a WWII Japanese American Internment Camp (2016)
Recent studies apply the concept of "personhood" to the archaeological record as part of the continuing attempt to understand the complexities of past societies by moving away from gross categories and instead examining socially constructed roles. This paper explores the application of "personhood" as a way to transcend a broadly defined focus on "children" or "childhood." Such generalizing terms can obscure the impact of gender, age, and other social or economic variables on children’s...
Documenting Early Exposure to Violence and Physical Stress among Juveniles in the Late Prehispanic Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Growing up during periods of chronic warfare can have long-term impacts on health and well-being across the lifecourse. Public health research has demonstrated how early exposure to violence or other physical stressors contributes to increased morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents. Within bioarchaeology, investigating the lived experience...
Dublin’s Bedford Asylum and the material legacy of the ‘Industrious Child’ (2016)
This paper will determine the extent to which the concept of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’ was incorporated into the design of public institutions for the reception of children in the early-nineteenth century. The primary case study of this paper will be the Bedford Asylum for Industrious Children, a purpose built institution constructed adjacent to the North Dublin Union House of Industry in Ireland. Particular attention will be given to the frequent mention of the asylum in the records of the...
Emotional Practice and Perspectives on Emotion in the Archaeology of Childhood (2017)
Childhood is a stage of life that engenders particularly empathetic and emotional responses from people, and those reactions affect how the topics of children and childhood are perceived, impact the individual(s) conducting research, and shape the ways we think about children as subjects. This paper is a wide ranging exploration of my experiences in the archaeological study of childhood, which includes both the role of emotion when interpreting childhood in the past and the emotional contexts of...
Examining Child Mortality in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Northern Idaho (2018)
This poster documents infant and child mortality in northern Idaho during the late 19th and early 20th centuries using historic cemeteries as a starting point for data collection. This project involved locating and photographing the oldest headstones associated with children and infants interred in Idaho’s Moscow Cemetery. The sample was limited to children and infants under 11 years old who died prior to 1921. By examining Moscow Cemetery’s headstones, the project researchers were able to...
Foundations of Childhood: Bioarchaeology of Subadults at the Late Shang Capital of Yinxu (2017)
Oracle-bone inscriptions and pre-Han texts say little about children, making bioarchaeology the best available method to study childhood during earlier periods. In 2004, extensive excavations were carried out on building foundations in Dasikong Village, a Late Shang (c.1200-1046 BC) lineage neighborhood found on the outskirts of modern-day Anyang, Henan Province, China. This led to a uniquely high recovery of subadult remains as younger subadults are often found in and around foundations. For...
Gender Ideals In 19th And 20th Century Easton, Maryland: An Analysis of Toys and Family Planning Material In Historically African-American Communities (2016)
Gender ideals of the past were often reflected in everyday material, such as toys and family planning items. The construction of gender ideals, enforcing gender roles throughout childhood through intimate toy interaction, and what kinds of women are considered "proper" women can all be studied through archaeological material. I will be conducting an analysis of material found at three sites in historic Easton, Maryland. Tying the archaeological material found at these sites together by analyzing...
Growing up on the move: childhood experience in the Viking Age (2016)
The involvement of children in the Viking Age migrations, and their experiences upon settlement in new regions, has been afforded little attention by archaeologists. In part this derives from the perceived paucity of evidence for children and their lives. It is also arguably because migration is generally overlooked as a facet of childhood because of an assumption that ‘the home’ is the environment in which childhood is experienced and thus this is where analytical attention is often focused....
Life During Wartime: Children, Violence, and Security at Morton Village (2017)
Children are not immune to the violence of war. They can be incidental victims, prime targets, active participants, beneficiaries of fierce protection, or the recipients of warfare-related symbolic action. Though not subject to the same high rates of violent trauma as their adult counterparts, the available osteological data show that a small number of children interred in the late prehistoric Norris Farms #36 cemetery in Fulton County, Illinois did suffer traumatic injuries, both fatal and...
Material Challenges to Mothering During Incarceration (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Women’s Work: Archaeology and Mothering" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Japanese American internees during WWII faced many challenges to the practices of mothering. Confinement in government run incarceration centers limited access to familiar resources, tools, materials, and activities while individual backgrounds created divergent ideologies surrounding appropriate strategies for child rearing....
Paracosmic Play Areas in Western Plains Boarding and Day Schools (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood play areas represent a complete departure from the landscapes that archaeologists often examine in that they exist within adults’ domestic, logistic, and/or sacred spaces yet simultaneously outside of any of these spatial ideals. The difficulty in analyzing these areas is further compounded when Indigenous ontologies are considered, especially...
Parenting in the Past: Investigations into the Spaces, Places, and Traces of Parenting in the Archaeological Record (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to bring together the existing literature and extend its theoretical and methodological implications for an archaeology of parenting, particularly in the times/places where contemporary written records do not exist. While parenting and childhood may be more readily visible to researchers and the public in periods where written records...