Children in the Prehistoric Puebloan Southwest$20.00Edited by Kathryn A. Kamp 360 pp., 6 x 9 Is there evidence of children in the archaeological record? Some would answer no, that "subadults" can only be distinguished when there is osteological confirmation. Others might suggest that the reason children don’t exist in prehistory is because no one has looked for them, much as no one had looked for women in the same context until recently. Focusing on the Southwest, contributors to this volume attempt to find some of those children, or at least show how they might be found. They address two issues: what was the cultural construction of childhood? What were children’s lives like? Determining how cultures with written records have constructed childhood in the past is
hard enough, but the difficulty is magnified in the case of ancient Puebloan societies. The
contributors here offer approaches from careful analysis of artifacts and skeletal remains
to ethnographic evidence in rock art. Topics include "The study of children has previously received almost no attention by archaeologists. Contents and Contributors: Prehistoric Puebloan Children in Archaeology and Art, The Morphology of Prehispanic Cradleboards: Form Follows Working for a Living: Childhood in the Prehistoric Ceramic Form and Skill: Attempting to Identify Child Learning and Teaching in the Prehispanic American Southwest, Patricia L. Crown, Children’s Health in the Prehistoric Southwest, Kristin D. Sobolik, University of Maine Thoughts Count: Ideology and the Children of Sand Canyon Wearing a Butterfly, Coming of Age: A 1500 Year Old |
