Do you have much in common with kids from long ago? Sure, their clothes and homes looked different. They ate different food and might not have ever gone to school. But they also made art—just like you. They helped their families with chores—just like you. They played with friends and siblings, and they explored the world around them. Archaeologists know about the lives of children from the past because of what they left behind: toys, tools, clothes, and more. So get ready to travel back in time and check out the lives of kids—from European cave kids twenty thousand years ago to American Indian kids one thousand years ago.

This activity book features 25 projects such as making a surface survey of a site, building a screen for sifting dirt and debris at a dig, tracking soil age by color, and counting tree rings to date a find, teaches kids the techniques that unearthed Neanderthal caves, Tutankhamun’s tomb, the city of Pompeii, and Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire. Kids will delight in fashioning a stone-age tool, playing a seriation game with old photographs of cars, “reading” objects excavated in their own backyards, and using patent numbers to date modern artifacts as they gain an overview of human history and the science that brings it back to life.

This book is a wide-ranging archaeological description and analysis of infancy, the social constructions of infancy, and the practices of infant care and social reproduction through time and across space. The main themes are the ways in which infants have lived in and have been perceived by society, the burial of the infant dead, and the meanings of domestic infanticide and infant sacrifice. It examines infancy as a process with meanings varying between and within societies, and it addresses the relationships between infants and adults. The contradictions which lie at the heart of attitudes to infants, and the exclusion of neonates from communal life and communal burial, are recurrent themes. The whole is rounded off with a concluding chapter which aims to establish some general statements about past attitudes to infancy and the treatment of infants, whilst stressing the particularity and specificity of the various historical contexts which have been examined.

The first edition of The Archaeology of Childhood has been credited by many as launching an entire new area of scholarship in archaeology. This second edition, published 17 years later, retains the first edition’s emphasis on combining sources from archaeology, anthropology, environmental studies, psychology, and sociology, to create a rich interdisciplinary basis for studying childhood across time and across cultures. The second edition is updated with archaeological studies about childhood that have been published in the past 20 years, and readers will see that the archaeology of childhood is a field with a relatively short history but a rich and varied scholarship. Archaeologists study children in the very recent past, as well as Neanderthal and early modern human children, and every period in between. These studies use artifacts, the built environment, spatial analyses, the artistic representations, skeletal remains, and mortuary assemblages to illuminate the lives of children, their families, and communities. The book’s eight chapters cover: 1: The Archaeology of Childhood in Context 2: Childhood in Archaeology: Themes, Terms, and Foundations 3: The Cultural Creation of Childhood: The Idea of Socialization 4: Socialization and the Material Culture of Childhood 5: Socialization, Behavior, and the Spaces and Places of Childhood 6: Socialization, Symbols, and Artistic Representations of Children 7: Socialization, Childhood, and Mortuary Remains 8: Looking Back and Moving Forward This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the major themes in the archaeological study of childhood and introduces the concept of socialization as a way of framing archaeological scholarship on children. Case studies and examples from around the globe are included, and the author’s expertise on childhood in 18th-20th century America is drawn upon to provide more familiar examples for readers allowing them to question their own assumptions and understandings of what it means to be a child. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and learning activities.

On a family visit to her grandparents in Israel, tomboy Dabi finds a kindred spirit in her aunt, who takes her on a new adventure where Dabi makes more than one important discovery. Includes author's note.

If you must encourage self-paced learning, then you must use the right set of educational tools. The right set of tools must contain age-appropriate information laid out in a child-friendly format. We have created this book with your children in mind. So grab a copy and let your child learn fun facts about archaeology!

This innovative guidebook introduces archaeologists to the complexities and possibilities of educating children in archaeology. The book explains the culture of the educational system, discusses the interface between education and archaeology, forewarns of sensitive and inflammatory issues, and provides real-world examples of a variety of successful archaeology education programs. Throughout, the emphasis is on exemplary programming that meets the needs of students, educators and archaeologists in a realistic, achievable manner. Published in cooperation with the Society for American Archaeology.