Essential Readings in the Bioarchaeology of Childhood

I first discovered the bioarchaeology of childhood in my final year of my undergraduate degree at McMaster University. I was taking a Bioarchaeology of Care course and started to think about the types of people that we discussed in my classes. Notably, most of the archaeological remains I had read about or studies were (drumroll please)... adults!

It was interesting to me that most archaeological studies were concerned with adult remains when children have existed in nearly every single corner of the world, and they've left their mark (see: finger flutings in cave art and footprints in Ethiopia). So, why are they so often overlooked in archaeological and bioarchaeological research?

Well, for one, bioarchaeology of childhood is still a growing field. In the 1960s, historian Phillipe Ariès proposed that the conception of childhood as a period of play is a relatively modern concept. Until the 17th century children were expected to look and behave as "mini adults." Archaeological inquiry into childhood really began to take hold and expand in the 1990s along with the growing popularity of gender and feminist theory in archaeology. Since then, the field has continued to grow with new technologies and research.

With such a rapidly growing field, it can be difficult to know where to start exploring the bioarchaeology of childhood. So, I've compiled what I consider to be the most essential readings for getting started:

Halcrow, S., Warren, R., Kushnick, G., & Nowell, A. (2020). Care of Infants in the Past: Bridging evolutionary anthropological and bioarchaeological approaches. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2(47), 1-17.

This article spearheaded by Sian Halcrow details how archaeologists can begin to think about how to measure and evaluate the ways that infants were cared for. Currently, focus on care provisioning focuses on individuals with disabilities, with little or no focus on infants (who also would have required extensive and specialized care). Halcrow and colleagues discuss how models of reconstructing care can be modified in order to assess and measure infant care practices in the archaeological past.

Read it here.

Kendall, E. (2016). The “terrible tyranny of the majority”: Recognising population variability and individual agency in past infant feeding practices. Care in the past: archaeological and interdisciplinary perspectives, 39-51.

This book chapter details the problems with population-level approaches and possible ways that archaeologists can reconstruct agency of infants and children in the research process. Typically, children and infants are seen as passive agents rather than actors in their own right. Kendall challenges this notion and suggests that, in adopting certain theoretical frameworks, archaeologists can return some of that individual agency to children and infants in the archaeological record.

Get the book here

Lewis, M. E. (2007). The bioarchaeology of children: perspectives from biological and forensic anthropology (Vol. 50). Cambridge University Press.

Mary Lewis provides an excellent and detailed overview of many aspects of childhood bioarchaeology from the origins of the field, to dietary studies and trauma, and future directions for the field. If you're looking for a more detailed overview of various themes, then this is the read for you.

Get it here

Mays, S., Gowland, R., Halcrow, S. & Murphy, E. (2017). Childhood Bioarchaeology: Perspectives on the Last 10 Years. Childhood in the Past, 10(1), 38-56.

This article can probably be credited with really helping me understand the field as a whole. Mays and colleagues provide a very thorough overview of the origins of childhood bioarchaeology as a field, as well as the relevant technological advances in the field over the last two decades. This is a great starting point for anyone remotely interested in childhood.

Read it here