"Children Cry For It!" An Artifact-Centered Study of Children's Health

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Children's impact on material culture is often ignored in archaeology, and outside of mortuary analysis, archaeological studies of children almost exclusively focus on their toys. In this paper, I consider the procurement, use, and discard of medicines from a child-centered framework. Using archaeological context, archival documents, and oral histories to establish a life cycle for items such as an intact bottle of “Bumstead’s Worm Syrup,” I explore children’s health at the turn of the twentieth century. These artifacts from Eckley Miners’ Village, a coal company town in northeastern Pennsylvania, were unearthed during CRM surveys and excavations in 1989 and the 1990s, and I have identified several using local drugstore catalogues from the 1880s. Contemporaneous diary entries from Eckley’s company store clerk and oral histories collected there in the 1970s illuminate the community’s perception of children’s health. This research provides insight into the daily lives of working-class children, and how their health and wellnesses impacted their families and the community as a whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38272.0