Children's activity in the production of the archaeological record of hunter-gatherers: An ethnoarchaeological approach

Abstract

Archaeological studies have generally considered populations as a whole; only in complex societies has attention been given to differences in class and/or status. In general, archaeologists have felt little attraction for studying individuals in particular, considering them methodologically inaccessible (Shennan, 1991). This archaeology without people has been criticized recently and the possibility of recovering individual lives throughout alleged narrative windows has been proposed (Hodder, 1999; Knapp and Meskell, 1997). Nonetheless, between the population and the individual exist factions and segments that are recognizable in the archaeological record: specialist groups (i.e., ceramists, workers in metals, etc.), elites, men, women, and so on. The recognition of the heterogeneous structure of society and of multiple social actors is founded to a certain extent in gender studies. Moreover, recent attention has also been paid to age groups, especially children, and their contribution to the archaeological record (Lillehammer, 1989; Sofaer Derevenski, 1994). Explicit recognition has been given to something that is, in fact, entirely obvious: children are both producers as well as consumers of material culture. © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.