The bioarchaeology of children

Abstract

Children in archaeology This book reviews the current status of children's skeletal remains in biological and forensic anthropology. Child skeletons provide a wealth of information on their physical and social life from their growth and development, diet and age at death, to the social and economic factors that expose them to trauma and disease at different stages of their brief lives. Cultural attitudes dictate where and how infants and children are buried, when they assume their gender identity, whether they are exposed to physical abuse, and at what age they are considered adults. Similarly, children may enter the forensic record as the result of warfare, neglect, abuse, murder, accident or suicide and the presence of young children within a mass grave has powerful legal connotations. The death of a child under suspicious circumstances is highly emotive and often creates intense media coverage and public concern, making the recovery and identification of their remains more pressing. In forensic anthropology, techniques used to provide a biological and personal identification as well as the cause and manner of death provide particular challenges. The study of children and childhood in social archaeology emerged out of gender theory in the 1990s, and has gradually increased in its sophistication, moving children out of the realm of women's work, to participating and active agents in the past, with their own social identity, material culture and influence on the physical environment around them. Children who were once invisible in the archaeological record are slowly coming into view.