Child’s Play? Exploring Archaeological Evidence for Care-Giving in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Summary

This paper will consider how archaeological evidence from two case-studies can inform our understanding of how attitudes to child care affected children’s lived experience. I will explore the character and range of archaeological evidence relating to childhood from two very different sites, a 19th-century mission complex in San Diego and a mid-20th century council estate in Lincolnshire, comparing ratios of different types of finds (eg marbles, metal toys, doll parts and slate pencils) to consider how archaeology can illuminate differences in the way children were cared for compared with the ‘norms’ of English nuclear families in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22442