Although children are difficult to ‘see’ archaeologically, Julie Wileman decided to try to ‘find’ them. Although most evidence is from burials, Julie wanted to look for living children too, exploring the phases of childhood from birth, weaning, education, play, work and finally untimely death.

In Egypt, a newborn child was seen as an embodiment of Horus, and the Aztecs regarded mothers as brave warriors who had been victorious over death. In the Roman world babies under a certain age were not regarded as human so could be buried within a town. Unwanted babies, especially twins which were regarded as unlucky, were exposed on rubbish dumps or hillsides. Egyptian reliefs show Nefertiti breastfeeding. In depictions of Egyptian families small children below a certain age are shown naked with shaven heads apart from a few long locks, perhaps a guard against lice. The earliest-surviving garment, now in the Petrie museum, is an Egyptian child’s tunic.

Archaeologically, children’s toys are hard to identify and have often been classified as a ‘ritual miniature item’. Many of the games children must have played leave no trace, but unmistakeable toys include miniature furniture, clay animals and baby’s rattles. Many toys were articulated, like the Barbie-like doll buried with a Roman girl; there was a regular toy market in Rome. Viking-era toy boats have been found in the Thames and the Liffey in Dublin and some medieval toy boats had cannons which actually worked using gunpowder.

The Egyptians believed in education, particularly for the upper classes. There are books of instruction with moral texts and writing was practised on potsherds. The Greeks educated boys, a legal requirement in Athens, with instruction in music, drama, writing and gymnastics. For the Romans literacy was general with schools for boys and girls. In Saxon times education took place in religious houses but secular education grew, with reading and writing followed by logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy; primers and hornbooks survive.

Children probably learned work skills by watching adults. In the Bronze Age they may have been used in mining: at the Great Orme copper mine in Wales some tunnels are too small to have been worked by adults.

. Egyptian illustrations show children working, and from the Classical period there are literary references.

In religion, children were regarded as closer to the spirit world and there were child saints and gods, but also child sacrifice – they could take messages to the gods. In various places children’s bodies are found in foundations of buildings, especially temples. The Inca child mummies were sacrificed to appease the mountain gods, probably regarded by their families as a great honour. Although Roman allegations of Carthaginian child sacrifice may have been propaganda, evidence of mass children’s burials has been found, although these may be children’s cemeteries.

In a c26,000 BC rock shelter burial a child of about four wears a shell pendant, animal bones surround the body, and the bones have a covering of red ochre. In a c5,000 BC mother and child burial in Denmark the child was laid on a swan’s wing. Some Neolithic chambered tombs in Britain and Ireland may have been given over to children’s burials, with 21 children discovered in one. Cists added to one Bronze Age tomb contain only children. Overall the evidence suggests that for the most part, children in the past were cherished.

Yvonne Masson