With the study of childhood becoming increasingly of interest within the discipline of archaeology, and a growing awareness that data surrounding childhood may provide new insights into numerous issues related to human cognitive and societal development, it is of no surprise that summary pieces are now beginning to emerge. Such volumes are a great asset to the field and are especially valuable for bringing the latest archaeological dialogues to the awareness of the everyday reader. Robin Derricourt's volume is no exception, being an accessible read for anyone wondering about day-to-day life in the past.

To begin, Derricourt clearly outlines the objective of the volume, his reasons for utilising comparisons to other primates and cross-cultural analogies, the book structure, and the terminology used, before moving into a brief background of childhood archaeology. The book's eleven chapters follow a child's life history, beginning with their birth and moving through to an untimely death—‘Understanding’, ‘Being’, ‘Growing’, ‘Feeding’, ‘Wearing’, ‘Learning’, ‘Playing’, ‘Fighting’, ‘Dying 1’, ‘Dying 2’, ‘Progressing’—creating a logical flow of information throughout the volume. Each chapter follows a set pattern. First, he sets out to describe the behaviours exhibited by extant great apes and the possible insights these observations may provide for early human ancestors (such as Australopithecines). He then outlines examples of archaeological evidence for childhood in the deep or more recent past, before concluding with a consideration of several illustrative cases of how modern hunter-gather-fisher or agricultural societies raise their children.

The first chapter (‘Understanding: The Deep Past of Childhood’) describes the now well-established issue of children having long been ignored by archaeologists, and their consequent invisibility in archaeological narratives, with the author rightly noting that childhood archaeology (as a research avenue) celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary at the time of the book's publication.

Chapter 2 (‘Being: Birth, Motherhood, and Infancy’) then begins the examination of the current state of the discipline through exploring the mothers-infant bond in our closest extant relatives and the possible implications for our hominin ancestors, before Chapter 3 (‘Growing: The Child in the Family’) touches on the subject of what would constitute a ‘traditional family’ in different contexts. Examples of children being depicted in ancient art are discussed here, before the practical issue of carrying an infant and grandparent alloparenting in several contemporary societies is brushed over.

Moving on, Chapter 4 (‘Feeding: Weaning, Eating, and Health’) covers one of the most important part of a child's survival: nutrition. Teeth analysis to identify the time of weaning and overall health of a child starts this chapter off, before infant care patterns held by great apes and a discussion of contemporary food provisioning in modern hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies are presented. Chapter 5 (‘Wearing: Clothing, Adornment, and Body Shaping’) focuses on another critical aspect: the clothing and adornment of the young. Moving from historical accounts of peoples whose children went about largely unclothed to the reconstruction of clothing from burials and Palaeolithic human figurines, this section concludes by touching on examples of worn pieces from more recent contexts.

The next two chapters—Chapter 6 (‘Learning: Knowledge and Skills’) and Chapter 7 (‘Playing: Fun, Games, Toys, and Culture)—cover the aspect of which we know most about past children's lives: their education. Literature regarding play and tradition transmission in apes leads the discussion, before a series of sections highlight the areas where archaeologists have made the most progress: stone tool technology, rock art production, and pottery production. These sections outline some of the challenges faced by researchers attempting to identify child-made material culture in the archaeological record.

The fact that much of what we currently know about past children has been drawn from their skeletal remains is obvious seeing as not only are the following three chapters (Chs 8, 9, and 10) entirely devoted to this topic, but burials are consistently referred to throughout the entire volume. Indeed, Derricourt does repeatedly cite the key childhood archaeology mantra, that we can tell very little about the lives of children from their deaths, however, more than half of the book uses burials as the source of information to inform on the lives of past children. While alternative avenues for future research are laid out in the concluding chapter (Ch. 11) of the volume—such as aDNA for sex determination of skeletal remains, expanding on the evidence for apprenticeships, or simply just keeping children in mind when excavating and interpreting features—these ideas are glossed over, missing the opportunity to really explore the cutting-edge of childhood archaeology.

This brings us to the literature cited within the volume. Within the opening pages of the book, a list of key references is presented to the reader. It is striking how few sources were utilised, and how heavily David Lancy's (2015) The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings was drawn on in order to talk about various modern contexts throughout the volume. In contrast, archaeological material, which was used to discuss the ‘prehistoric’ (defined in the book as ‘societies that preceded the emergence of civilisation’, p. xvii) past, is quite limited in geographic and temporal scope. Though examples are drawn from late Pleistocene and early agricultural contexts in Africa, the Levant, and Australia, Europe provides the bulk of archaeological aspects discussed. While the history of archaeology, taphonomy, and sampling issues do account for some of this disparity, it would have been rewarding to have a more even spread of contexts wherever possible.

Similarly, it is a pity that the leadership of female researchers in the field of childhood archaeology is poorly represented in the main text. Although Derricourt has correctly represented the contributions of various researchers within the chapter reference lists and footnotes, the text does lend itself to the misconception that male researchers lead, and indeed, dominate the field. Consequently, those unfamiliar with past childhood studies and wishing to follow up on this developing line of enquiry would naturally seek out those highlighted in the main text. For example, I found that in four (of the eleven) chapters, only male researchers were mentioned by name within the main text; in nine (of the eleven) chapters, more than seventy-five per cent of in-text mentions were of male researchers; and, in total, while forty-one per cent of the literature cited (in the reference list) was female-led/sole-authored, seventy-three per cent of researchers mentioned by name within the main text were male.

In sum, Unearthing Childhood: Young Lives in Prehistory rightly highlights the significance of children in past societies and the quantity of work ahead for archaeology, anthropology, and many other disciplines in bringing children back into our picture of the past. Its focus on children's burials as the main source of information presented to the reader, instead of the advances researchers have made in identifying material culture or behaviours used in life, however, misses the chance to redirect focus towards these developing methodologies and theories.