Children are a thorny subject for archaeologists. That statement might be taken to refer to the near impossibility many of us face in attempting to achieve a reasonable work/life balance faced with the conflicting demands of families and a profession which is often more like a religious vocation that a nine-to-five routine. But actually it pertains to the fact that archaeological evidence for sub-adults is very difficult to find, identify, or understand. One of the most interesting conferences I’ve been to recently addressed exactly this issue.
Anyone working in a university archaeology department cannot fail to be aware of the vast number of conferences that one could go to: in the department at Cambridge, the notice boards are always brimming with announcements of forthcoming events in every possible part of the world on every imaginable topic. One could happily spend all one’s time just going from one conference to the next, but attractive as this might sound, most of the time, of course, I’m far too busy to attend more than a handful – usually ones I’ve been asked to speak at or have been involved in arranging.
But when, a few months ago, I saw an announcement for a conference on the archaeology of infancy and childhood, to be held in the University of Kent, I was immediately interested. As a parent whose research lies mainly in medieval rural settlement, I’ve long been struck by how rarely children feature in archaeological reports of village excavations of the Middle Ages – despite the fact that we know such places were full of children. I offered to talk at the conference about this, or about Time Team sites which have involved children – and ended up agreeing to do both. Normally, this would have been a fairly challenging undertaking, but in this case it was nearly made completely impossible, rather ironically, by my nine-year-old who broke both (!) arms, in three places, falling off his bicycle two weeks beforehand. Luckily, despite needing surgery, he healed quickly.
Sharing cultural heritage