Children, Death and Burial: Archaeological Discourses [Paperback]

Eileen Murphy (Editor); Mélie Le Roy (Editor)

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Children, Death and Burials assembles a panorama of studies with a focus on juvenile burials; the 16 papers have a wide geographic and temporal breadth and represent a range of methodological approaches. All have a similar objective in mind, however, namely to understand how children were treated in death by different cultures in the past; to gain insights concerning the roles of children of different ages in their respective societies and to find evidence of the nature of past adult–child relationships and interactions across the life course.

The contextualisation and integration of the data collected, both in the field and in the laboratory, enables more nuanced understandings to be gained in relation to the experiences of the young in the past. A broad range of issues are addressed within the volume, including the inclusion/exclusion of children in particular burial environments and the impact of age in relation to the place of children in society. Child burials clearly embody identity and ‘the domestic child’, ‘the vulnerable child’, ‘the high status child’, ‘the cherished child’, ‘the potential child’, ‘the ritual child’ and the ‘political child’, and combinations thereof, are evident throughout the narratives. Investigation of the burial practices afforded to children is pivotal to enlightenment in relation to key facets of past life, including the emotional responses shown towards children during life and in death, as well as an understanding of their place within the social strata and ritual activities of their societies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Approaches to Archaeological Juvenile Burial

Eileen Murphy and Mélie Le Roy

2. How Were Infants Considered at Death during the Neolithic Period in France?

Mélie Le Roy

3. Perinatal Death and Cultural Buffering in a Neolithic Community at Çatalhöyük

Belinda Tibbetts

4. Burying Children and Infants at Kadruka 23: New Insights into Juvenile Identity and Disposal of the Dead in the Nubian Neolithic

Emma Maines, Pascal Sellier, Philippe Chambon and Olivier Langlois

5. Children’s Burials in the Eneolithic Cemetery of Sultana-Malu Roşu, Romania

Catalin Lazar, Ionela Craciunescu, Gabriel Vasile and Mihai Florea

6. Late Chalcolithic Skeletal Remains and Associated Mortuary Practices from Çamlıbel Tarlası in Central Anatolia

Jayne-Leigh Thomas

7. Processed Babies: Early Bronze Age Infant Burials from Bulgarian Thrace

Kathleen McSweeney and Krum Bacvarov

8. ‘Missing infants’: Giving Life to Aspects of Childhood in Mycenaean Greece via Intramural Burials

Katerina Kostanti

9. Bronze Age Child Burials in the Southern Trans-Urals (Twenty-first – Fifteenth Centuries cal. BC)

Natalia Berseneva

10. Juvenile Burial and Age as a Social Category in Funerary Contexts of Pre- and Protopalatial Crete

Nathalja Calliauw

11. Geto-Dacian Child Burials in the Second Iron Age

Valeriu Sîrbu and Diana-Crina Dăvîncă

12. Out of the Cradle and into the Grave: The Children of Anglo-Saxon Great Chesterford, Essex, England

Christine Cave and Marc Oxenham

13. Emotional Act, Superstition or Ritual? – Evidence from Child Burials in the Medieval period. A Case Study from St Clemens Churchyard, Copenhagen, Denmark

Jane Jark Jensen

14. Interpreting Cultural and Biological Markers of Stress and Status in Medieval Subadults from England

Heidi Dawson

15. Atypical Burial Practice and Juvenile Age-at-death in Later Medieval Gaelic Ireland: The Evidence from Ballyhanna, Co. Donegal

Eileen Murphy

16. Interring the ‘Deserving’ Child: The Archaeology of the Deaths and Burials of Children at the Kilkenny Workhouse during the Great Famine in Ireland, 1845-52

Jonny Geber

Reviews & Quotes

"…a collection of valuable contributions put together by researchers from all over Europe. The enthusiasm of the authors for their topics is obvious throughout the proceedings."
Anna Pankowska
IANSA (09/03/2018)

"...an interesting set of papers contributing new data to our picture of medieval childhood, and a faithful reflection of the papers and discussion that enervated the original conference session."
Elizabeth Craig-Atkins
Medieval Archaeology (16/10/2018)

"The case studies in Murphy and Le Roy offer new evidence and data for a range of archaeological periods, as well as new insights into renowned sites, such as Çatahöyük, and should be valuable to students and scholars alike."
Rebecca Redfern
Antiquity (06/12/2018)

"…this volume would not only appeal to those with a general interest in the diversity of child burial practices over time, but becomes an essential resource for those interested in childhood, death and burial within prehistoric societies."
Sophie Newman
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (13/03/2018)

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