Welcome to the Spring issue of Volume 17 of Childhood in the Past, the journal of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past (SSCIP). The Society has had another busy and productive year in 2023.
The tenth volume in the SSCIP monograph series – Normative, Atypical or Deviant? Interpreting Prehistoric and Protohistoric Child Burial Practices (edited by Eileen Murphy and Mélie Le Roy) was published in August. Proposals for future monographs are always welcome and should be submitted to Lynne McKerr, General Editor of the monograph series, following the guidelines provided on the SSCIP website.
The Society had a stall at the European Archaeology Fair at the 29th annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists which was held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 30 August to 2 September. SSCIP committee members also organised two sessions at the conference. ‘Through Infancy and Beyond: Bioarchaeological Perspectives of Childhood in the Past’ was organised by Claire Hodson (SSCIP Secretary), Jenna Dittmar and Antony Colombo and was one of the largest sessions of the conference with 27 presentations and three posters, attesting to the huge level of interest in the study of the remains of children within bioarchaeology. Papers from the session will form the basis of a forthcoming special issue of Childhood in the Past. The second session, ‘New Perspectives on Childhood Archaeology Past, Present and Future: Papers in Honour of Grete Lillehammer’, was organised by Traci Ardren (Committee member) and Carenza Lewis (Vice-President) in recognition of the major contribution that Grete (another SSCIP Vice-President) has made to the field of childhood in the past. We were delighted that Grete was able to join the session online and that we were able to share a celebratory drink together at the wine reception following the session and during which the aforementioned tenth SSCIP monograph was launched.
The 15th annual SSCIP conference took place in a hybrid format on the 18-20 October and was organised by Rocío García-Mancuso and colleagues from the National University of La Plata, Argentina. The theme of the conference was ‘Voices of Time: Concepts and Perspectives that Recover Children of the Past’ and it was organised as nine sessions, involving 28 presentations, presented in both Spanish and English. While the majority of participants hailed from Argentina, others came from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, Romania, Spain and the UK. The conference keynote address was given by SSCIP Membership Secretary, Dr. Claire Hodson of Durham University, and was on the topic of ‘Addressing the Bioarchaeological Challenges of Exploring Non-adult Health and Wellbeing in Past Societies’. Student participants were encouraged to enter the competition for the SSCIP Student Award for the best presentation and this was won by Mathilde Vestergaard Meyer of Aarhus University whose presentation was entitled ‘Playing to Survive: The Role of Early Age Innovation During the Little Ice Age in Greenland’. Many congratulations to Rocío and her team for organising a fantastic conference which was thoroughly enjoyed by all involved, whether online or in Argentina. We are delighted to report that the 16th annual SSCIP conference will be organised by Antony Colombo and his colleagues in Bordeaux, France, on 20–23 November 2024.
On 7 December, Kayt Hawkins from Archaeology South-East at the Centre for Applied Archaeology, UCL Institute of Archaeology, delivered an excellent lecture to SSCIP on the topic of ‘The “Baby Bottles” of Roman Britain’. In December we also said farewell to two of our longstanding SSCIP Committee members – Kirsty Squires (Outreach and Student Officer) and Esme Hookway (Social Media and Publicity Officer). Kirsty has been a member of the committee since 2016, while Esme joined in 2019. We are very grateful to them both for all of the hard work they put into their roles. Following the AGM, Rosie Crawford was elected as the new Social Media and Publicity Officer, while Mélie Le Roy took on the role of Outreach and Student Officer. We are delighted to welcome them both to the SSCIP Committee and wish them the very best with their new roles.
Volume 17 of our journal begins with a fascinating invited piece by Matthew O. Grenby which explores the history of the relationship between heritage and children. Today children are an integral part of heritage education and are welcome guests at museums and archaeological sites, in recognition of the role they play in ensuring the ongoing protection and preservation of the past. Grenby notes that this approach seems to have started in earnest in the late nineteenth century when provision began to be made for children to formally visit heritage sites, despite adult reservations of the potential damage they could cause. Delving further back in time he explores diaries, journals, letters and memoirs for evidence of less formal visits by children to historic sites. He demonstrates that the Grand Tour, undertaken by wealthy young people sometimes as part of a family group, often involved visits to a range of archaeological and cultural sites as part of their education. This, he suggests, was the forerunner of the heritage education approaches we are so familiar with today.
The volume also contains two research papers. The first paper by Anthi Balitsari investigates the context of child burials within actively used Middle Helladic period houses in mainland Greece. She proposes that cultural changes at the end of the preceding Early Helladic period may have led to an emphasis being placed on family groups which gradually normalised the coexistence of daily life with such intramural burials. She cautions that these burials can be interpreted in a variety of ways, perhaps representing children who were seriously ill or disabled, or that the practice may have been atypical and based on the desires of particular caregivers. Further emotion-centred research may help disentangle such questions.
In their paper, Jessica L. A. Palmer, Angela R. Lieverse and Andrea L. Waters-Rist, present a standardised recording method for 16 non-adult entheses in the upper and lower limbs of growing individuals. The study is based on 29 archaeological individuals of known age and sex from the Post-Medieval village of Middenbeemster, curated at the Human Osteology Laboratory of Leiden University. The study of entheses in growing individuals has been largely neglected and this important new method will now allow other researchers to further explore factors affecting bone development in non-adult skeletal remains.
Our Book Reviews Editor, Siân Halcrow, has compiled three reviews for us to enjoy – Normative, Atypical or Deviant? Interpreting Prehistoric and Protohistoric Child Burial Practices (SSCIP Monograph 10), edited by Eileen Murphy and Mélie Le Roy; Explaining Variation in Juvenile Punishment: The Role of Communities and Systems, edited by Steven N. Zane, and Young Children Visit Museums: Cultural and Creative Perspectives, by Margaret Carr, Brenda Soutar, Leanne Clayton, Bronwen Cowie, Jeanette Clarkin-Phillips and Shelley Butler. We are always on the lookout for articles and book reviews to include in our journal so please consider submitting your work to Childhood in the Past. We hope you will enjoy the volume.