Rise of children - part two

As archaeological research began to interpret artefacts not only as objects but also as the result of cultural activity, the need to study biological artefacts more closely with the archaeological context was recognised. Consequently, the concept of bioarchaeology emerged in the 1970s. The basis of bioarchaeology is the recognition that historical events can be traced back to a complex interplay of environmental, social, and cultural factors. 

This required synthesising data from diverse methods and disciplines and interpreting them within the archaeological context, considering their spatial and temporal dimensions. This approach emphasised the importance of the anthropological record, and the emergence of novel archaeological themes has precipitated a substantial expansion in anthropology.

The distinct study of gender roles and social groups, including children, has begun, reversing the image of infant remains as under-represented and less informative. Initially, the first studies on child remains were about refining age estimation methods based on certain morphological and metric methods or attempting to determine sex.

Since the 1990s, significant progress has been made in the field of paleopathology, leading to new research lines that explore children's life circumstances, diseases, health conditions, and activities (e.g., the interpretation of traumatic lesions). This development has culminated in a distinct research discipline focusing on children, as evidenced by the publication of numerous large-scale studies addressing their subject exclusively. 

The large number of large-scale excavations in recent decades has also contributed to this development, as they have deepened our knowledge of the people and material culture of the ancient world, including artefacts related to children (e.g. toys, feeding bottles, etc.). The expansion of research focusing on non-adults has led to the realisation that they can also serve as a source for the study of motherhood.

It is evident that children are no longer viewed in isolation; rather, they are recognised as integral components of an intricate biological and social system. The developing analytical methods are broadening the perspective and essentially raising the study of children to the same level as that which has traditionally been found only in studies of adult age groups, and in fact through them it is possible to study or reconstruct processes which cannot be detected by the remains of adults.

Prof. Rebecca Gowland, author of several important and innovative papers on the subject, will present this nearly two-decade-long evolutionary path and its future in another opening presentation, „Small Beginnings: Theoretical and Methodological Advances in the Bioarchaeological Analysis of Infants in the Past”, from the perspective of human remains. 

Book covers from left to right: Lewis, M. 2007. The Bioarchaeology of Children – Perspectives from Biological and Forensic Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.; Cunningham, C. Scheuer, L., Black, S. 2016. Developmental Juvenile Osteology. Academic Press; Gowland, R., Halcrow, S. 2020. The Mother-Infant Nexus in Anthropology, Springer International Publishing.