Discovering Latent Children in the Archaeological Record of the Great Basin

Abstract

‘One of the major challenges of the child's world to archaeology is to throw light upon the transference of culture and tradition from one generation to another.' Grete , The archaeological record in the Great Basin is rich and spans the proto-historic to the late Pleistocene. There is a pronounced lack of attention to the archaeological record of children in North America. We have only begun to address questions concerning socialization and nurturing of children, especially as they pertain to learning behaviour. Traditionally the focus has been on the identification of projectile point types and adult activity areas while often relegating much of the assemblage to indecipherable palimpsests. While we might recognize that children were present and that their material signature is a component of the archaeological record, the latent nature of the phenomenon coupled with a predominately surface record can be frustrating and has led to ignoring the presence of children. I will use an example from the Great Basin, USA to argue that evidence for nurturing and teaching of children can be teased out of the archaeological record, if we incorporate looking for appropriate technological and spatial signatures. Finding the children and interpreting their presence and roles in the society can only contribute toward the construction of more complete models to explain the behaviour of hunter gatherers in the Great Basin.