Tracing Childhood: Bioarchaeological Investigations of Early Lives in Antiquity

Conclusion. Little Bodies, Big Voices: The Lives of Children in the Past

Conclusion Little Bodies, Big Voices The Lives of Children in the Past Marta P. Alfonso-Durruty, Jennifer L. Thompson, and John J. Crandall Infancy, childhood, and adolescence, like other life stages (such as adulthood ), are a biological universal of our species. However, the somatic, psychological , and social stances of “children” (all subadults) vary dramatically depending on cultural conditions (Lancy 2008; Roveland 2001; Sander et al. 1996). While the body transforms in response to biological changes, cultural ideologies also mold it so that culturally specific lifeways are embodied in the subadult “little body” (Lewis 2007; Panter-Brick, 1998; Sofaer, 2006). Subadult skeletons, therefore, have the potential to provide a wealth of information regarding the social life of children (Chapter 9; Lewis 2007). The social construction of childhood is not just a discursive matter: it has material, embodied consequences. A true understanding of the social subject in bioarchaeology must consider both the biological and cultural aspects of the human experience. The study of the body or skeleton can reveal these dimensions and their intersection, given that it is modeled by biological, cultural, social, environmental , and historical forces (Lewis 2007; Sofaer 2006). Although the integration of social and biological perspectives may seem obvious today, past anthropological studies certainly emphasized one to the detriment of the other. A Very Brief History of Growing Up in Anthropology Anthropological interest in children and childhood has a long but uneven history that has its precedents in the descriptions and records produced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators (Bluebond-Langner and Korbin 2007; LeVine 2007). The American and British founding Conclusion. Little Bodies, Big Voices: The Lives of Children in the Past · 247 fathers of anthropology (Boas 1912; Malinowsky 1929) and their students (e.g., Mead 1928a, 1928b; Firth 1936) conducted the earliest anthropological works on the subject (for a detailed review, see LeVine 2007). Thus, by the 1920s through the 1950s, anthropologists were actively publishing ethnographic accounts of childhood that were mostly based on fieldwork conducted in non-Western communities. The purpose of these studies was to contest ideas of universality, especially those regarding psychological development (for more information, see LeVine 2007). These early, as well as subsequent, anthropological studies of living children emphasized acculturation and socialization. These concepts are useful heuristic tools, but they limit our views in that they conceptualize children in a binary contrast with adults. The emphasis in socialization and acculturation led to depictions of children as primitive, natural, and passive (Baxter 2005; Prout 2000, 2005; Roveland 2001). This portrait of children as unfinished products went hand in hand with Western concepts of childhood, in which children are depicted as innocent and vulnerable, and childhood is understood as a time that is, or at least should be, free of cares and responsibilities (Lancy 2008; Prout 2005). By the 1980s the theoretical tides were turning, and discourse studies (e.g., Foucault 1980) as well as mass media revealed the variable nature of childhood and the multiple social and historical contexts in which it takes place (Broude 1995; Hewlett and Lamb 2005; Lancy 2008; Prout 2005). The emphasis thus changed from the biological nature of childhood to its social/ cultural construction (Hewlett and Lamb 2005; Lancy 2008; Prout 2005). Constructionists saw the body as the product of discourses of power (Foucault 1980) and thus as a site of representation, a stage for display (Joyce 2005). On the other hand, those who saw the body “as artifact” understand it as a passive entity shaped by the workings of culture (Bourdieu 1984). These approaches eventually led to a body that was denatured and that lost its centrality (Joyce 2005). Biological anthropology, like cultural anthropology, also has a long history of scientific curiosity about children, but the theoretical stance differs from that followed by early cultural studies. Darwin, for example, was interested in childhood and wrote on the subject emphasizing the biological processes of development (Darwin [1872] 1979; Prout 2005). The Darwinian legacy rooted childhood studies in biology. Thus, subsequent analyses of childhood became saturated with notions of biological universality and dealt, for the most part, with the evolutionary origins and energetic costs of childhood (Bogin 2005, 2009; Bogin and Smith 1996; Bledsoe 2001; 248 · M. P. Alfonso-Durruty, J. L. Thompson, and J. J. Crandall Charnov 1993; Gurven and Kaplan 2006; Lummaa 2001; van Schaik et al. 2006). Traditional bioarchaeological studies corresponded well with the concerns of pediatric medicine, in which the child was viewed...