Children in Antiquity originated as a conference hosted at the University of Sydney in 2015 and as the Children in Antiquity: Greece and Egypt display mounted at the University's Nicholson Museum in the same year by Beaumont, Harrington and C. Richards. The editors should be warmly congratulated on bringing together stimulating and innovative contributions, from so many leading and emergent scholars researching childhood in the past, in this handbook-style volume, which is one of the most recent additions to Routledge's Rewriting Antiquity series.
The handbook is structured thematically, with five parts – ‘What is a Child?’, ‘Daily Life’, ‘Religion and Ritual’, ‘Death’ and ‘Bioarchaeology’ – following the editors’ introduction. The first four parts feel balanced, with nine to ten chapters, whilst ‘Bioarchaeology’, though short with only three, is well placed as a finale adjacent to ‘Death’. Each part is organised chronologically progressing through considerations of Pharaonic Egypt, Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece, Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Italy, Archaic and Classical Greece, Etruscan Italy, the Hellenistic World, Graeco-Roman Egypt, Rome and Late Antiquity and Byzantium. The introduction effectively outlines the aims, structure and themes of the volume, highlighting some of the key takeaways about how childhood was defined and experienced in antiquity. It is fascinating to note some remarkable consistencies across the volume's nine geo-chronological categories.
Harrington (Chapter 1) explores how childhood was defined and children were perceived in dynastic Egypt. A.P. Chapin (Chapter 2) investigates definitions of childhood and children in Aegean prehistory. E. Perego (Chapter 3) considers the social inclusion of children and their attainment of personhood in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Italy. Beaumont (Chapter 4) compares how childhood was experienced in Archaic and Classical Athens and Sparta. M. Nielsen (Chapter 5) identifies evidence of children in Etruscan art and archaeology. M. Golden (Chapter 6) – a pioneer of the discipline, to whom the volume is dedicated – scrutinises the experiences and treatment of children in Hellenistic Greece. V. Dasen (Chapter 7) reviews ancient sources’ recommendations for the treatment of children in Rome. L.M. Jiménez (Chapter 8) evaluates how childhood was defined and conceptualised in Graeco-Roman Egypt. G. Nathan (Chapter 9) explores how late antique society conceptualised children and childhood. J. Cromwell (Chapter 10) investigates how children were treated in Coptic Egypt.
In Part 2 A. Marshall (Chapter 11) details children's daily life experiences in ancient Egypt. S. Langdon (Chapter 12) evaluates how socio-political change between the Bronze and Early Iron Ages impacted the social value of children in Greece. S. Lipkin and E. Jarva (Chapter 13) investigate how children experienced ageing and gendering in their daily lives in early Rome and Latium. R. Garland (Chapter 14) explores children's socialisation in Archaic and Classical Greece. L. Bonfante (Chapter 15) considers how Etruscan artists represented children. C. Laes (Chapter 16) reviews the distinctive characteristics of childhood in Hellenistic Asia, Greece, Macedon and Egypt. F. Dolansky (Chapter 17) explores children's day-to-day activities in the late Roman Republic and the Empire. M. Malouta (Chapter 18) investigates children's socialisation and their rights in society in Hadrianic Egypt, using the polis of Antinoopolis as a case study. V. Vuolanto (Chapter 19) reviews children's day-to-day activities in the late antique Graeco-Roman world.
In Part 3 K. Szpakowska (Chapter 20) explores children's roles in religious practice in Pharaonic Egypt. U. Günkel-Maschek (Chapter 21) investigates children's roles in non-funerary religious practice in the Bronze Age Aegean. E. van Rossenberg (Chapter 22) evaluates how children were initiated into religion and ritual in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Italy. Dillon (Chapter 23) investigates children's active and passive roles in Greek religion in the Archaic and the Classical periods. J.M. Turfa (Chapter 24) reviews evidence for children's engagement with religion and ritual in Etruscan society. O. Bobou (Chapter 25), in a similar vein to Dillon, explores children's active and passive participation in religious practice in the Hellenistic Greek world. J. McWilliam (Chapter 26) appraises children's roles in domestic, local and state religion in Roman Italy. A. Nifosi (Chapter 27) details religious practices and rituals that children were involved with in Graeco-Roman Egypt. B. Caseau (Chapter 28) scrutinises children's involvement in Christian rituals in the late antique Mediterranean.
In Part 4 R.K. Power (Chapter 29) evaluates what child, infant and foetus burials suggest about the social value and agency of juveniles in Predynastic to Middle Kingdom Egypt. J. Kaiser (Chapter 30) compares the mortuary treatment of children and adults in Egypt from the Second Intermediate to the Late periods. C. Gallou (Chapter 31) investigates what the treatment of children in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greek burials indicates about social responses to juvenile death. G. Shepherd (Chapter 32) explores what the mortuary treatment of children suggests about their roles in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Sicilian society. V. Vlachou (Chapter 33) investigates how far children were treated as the special dead in Archaic and Classical Greece. F. Fulminante and S. Stoddart (Chapter 34) review how children were treated in Latium vetus (Early Iron Age Middle Tyrrhenian Italy) and the implications for how society considered children. N. Dimakis (Chapter 35) summarises how children were handled in death in the Hellenistic world, highlighting avenues for future research. H. Lindsay (Chapter 36) scrutinises the mortuary treatment of children and attitudes to juvenile death in Rome. K. Muhlestein and R.P. Evans (Chapter 37) report on how children were treated in burial in Graeco-Roman Egypt, with focus on a case study site in the Fayoum. L. Garland (Chapter 38) explores responses to child death in Byzantium, as evidenced by the writing of Michael Psellos in particular.
In the last Part K.E. Marklein and S.C. Fox (Chapter 39) summarise bioarchaeological research that has sought to reveal how childhood was defined and how children were treated in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. S.M. Wheeler, L. Williams and T.L. Dupras (Chapter 40) explore how childhood was experienced biologically and socially in Roman Egypt, as evidenced by the Romano-Christian Kellis 2 Cemetery in the Dakleh Oasis. C. Bourbou (Chapter 41) closes the volume by considering the bioarchaeological evidence for children's mortality and health and infant feeding practices in the Byzantine Zoodochos Pigi cemetery at Alikianos on Crete.
The chapters evaluate combinations of iconography, material culture, archaeological deposits, literary sources, language, inscriptions and burial evidence. All are supplemented by extensive bibliographies, and most are enhanced by referencing extensive examples and integrating figures including images, plans, tables and charts. They consistently have clear structures, typically defined by an effective use of subtitles, which make them accessible to non-specialists as well as appealing to experts.
As several chapters indicate, the childhood in the past discipline was inspired by the adversity of historian Philippe Ariès, claiming that the ancient world lacked a distinct concept of childhood (in his seminal L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien regime [1960; English translation 1962]). The discipline's subsequent emergence in the later twentieth century was signalled by articles including G. Lillehammer's A Child is Born (1989). Its building momentum was confirmed by the establishment of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past in 2007. Extensive work since Ariès has proved, conclusively, that childhoods were recognised in most ancient societies, and ongoing work illustrates that in many cases it is also possible to start exploring children's experiences in the past, as well as their existence. Some of the most successful work investigating children and childhood in antiquity consists of edited volumes including J. Neils and J.H. Oakley's Coming of Age in Ancient Greece (2003), A. Cohen and J.B. Rutter's Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy (2007) and recent Oxford handbooks, which investigate a range of time periods and/or geographical regions. Children in Antiquity builds upon those successes and fruitfully broadens their horizons, at once exploring a much-expanded geographical area and a significantly augmented chronological range to present investigation of a host of ancient societies not previously investigated together. The volume follows recent calls in the discipline to make attempts to centralise the perspective of the child and recognise and explore children's agency. With the SSCIP's decennial celebrations having passed in 2017, childhood in the past research is coming of age; the archaeological and historical child is developing through adolescence and looking towards its maturity. The volume demonstrates how far different sub-disciplines are on their own path to maturity, and it reveals that the maturity of each is full of the promise of further fascinating research on children and their childhoods in the distant past.
Particular strengths of the volume are its explorations of children's agency, its focus upon the experiences of children and the attempts of many of its chapters to access children's perspectives, represented as they typically are through the lens of adult perceptions in archaeological, iconographic, literary and epigraphic records. The volume is rich in exploring the variable multitude of experiences of being a child in antiquity and its extended contemplation of children's daily lives is innovative and much needed in a body of scholarship that often overlooks children's day-to-day existence because of a perceived inaccessibility or unavailability of evidence. A successful structure makes the volume easy and efficient to use, and excellent cross-referencing between chapters regularly flags up other relevant material. Ultimately, the volume presents a commendable alternative to works focusing on one theme, methodological approach or region, and it goes some way to addressing lacunae of research on certain periods and areas. It effectively juxtaposes evaluation of areas subjected to minimal previous investigation with those that have well-established sub-disciplines, to highlight where future work needs to be focused to improve our understanding of the many ways childhood could be perceived and experienced in antiquity.
The volume could have done more to embrace and showcase the interdisciplinarity that Bourbou's concluding chapter calls for. Many contributions hint at the benefits and potential of multi-disciplinary approaches but leave room for more definite use of them. For example, several briefly contemplate some of the key tenets of the extended life course concept, derived from sociology – that identity can begin before embodied life and endure beyond physiological death –, but none actively acknowledge the concept or its origins. The volume could also have provided more clarity, especially for non-specialists, on the chronologies and geography of the eras and areas discussed. A table outlining the parameters of chronological periods in different regions and a map illustrating territories and the locations of key sites would have served the purpose admirably. These are, however, minor quibbles about an excellent volume, the publication of which undoubtedly marks a milestone in childhood in the past's progression towards maturity as a research discipline.
The chronological, geographical and typological range that Children in Antiquity covers surely means that it offers something to every scholar with an interest in ancient childhoods and children's experiences in the past. The substantial price tag limits how accessible the printed volume is to independent academics and scholars with a passing interest, but the volume is surely a vital addition to any library that supports researchers investigating past societies, and past childhoods in particular. The e-book is available at a much more accessible price and is assuredly an essential addition to any interested researcher's collection.
