In graduate school I had the opportunity to perform a (very light) literary review of any archaeological topic of my choosing. I chose children’s artifacts, for the exact same reason these museum curators chose too; a surprisingly little amount is known about how children lived.
A sledge made from a horse’s jaw, the remains of a medieval puppet, the coffin of a one-year-old Roman child, and the skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon girl will all go on display in Cambridge today as part of a unique exhibition illuminating the archaeology of childhood.
Hide and Seek: Looking for Children in the Past opens today and runs until January 29, 2017, at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, bringing together collections held by the University and Cambridgeshire County Council.
Unprecedented in its scope and ambition, Hide and Seek examines why so little is known about the life of children when children have outnumbered adults for most of human history.
More photos and the full article at: The archaeology of childhood | University of Cambridge
As the article points out, often artifacts associated with children are often unclear in their use. Were they toys? Tokens of protection? And how many toys made of paper, wood, or other perishable items have been lost to history? A very fascinating topic.
Mental Flowers 