The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood


Book Description

In this volume, experts from around the world investigate childhood in the past, showing why it is important to understand childhood, why different cultures construct different ideas of how to rear children, what part children play in the community, and when and why childhood ends.




The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World


Book Description

The past thirty years have seen an explosion of interest in Greek and Roman social history, particularly studies of women and the family. Until recently these studies did not focus especially on children and childhood, but considered children in the larger context of family continuity and inter-family relationships, or legal issues like legitimacy, adoption and inheritance. Recent publications have examined a variety of aspects related to childhood in ancient Greece and Rome, but until now nothing has attempted to comprehensively survey the state of ancient childhood studies. This handbook does just that, showcasing the work of both established and rising scholars and demonstrating the variety of approaches to the study of childhood in the classical world. In thirty chapters, with a detailed introduction and envoi, The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World presents current research in a wide range of topics on ancient childhood, including sub-disciplines of Classics that rarely appear in collections on the family or childhood such as archaeology and ancient medicine. Contributors include some of the foremost experts in the field as well as younger, up-and-coming scholars. Unlike most edited volumes on childhood or the family in antiquity, this collection also gives attention to the late antique period and whether (or how) conceptions of childhood and the life of children changed with Christianity. The chronological spread runs from archaic Greece to the later Roman Empire (fifth century C.E.). Geographical areas covered include not only classical Greece and Roman Italy, but also the eastern Mediterranean. The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World engages with perennially valuable questions about family and education in the ancient world while providing a much-needed touchstone for research in the field.




The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion


Book Description

A comprehensive overview, by period and region, of the archaeology of ritual and religion. The coverage is global, and extends from the earliest prehistory to modern times. Written by over sixty renowned specialists, the Handbook presents the very best in current scholarship, and will also stimulate further research.




The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood


Book Description

Real understanding of past societies is not possible without including children, and yet they have been strangely invisible in the archaeological record. Compelling explanation about past societies cannot be achieved without including and investigating children and childhood. However marginal the traces of children's bodies and bricolage may seem compared to adults, archaeological evidence of children and childhood can be found in the most astonishing places and spaces. The archaeology of childhood is one of the most exciting and challenging areas for new discovery about past societies. Children are part of every human society, but childhood is a cultural construct. Each society develops its own idea about what a childhood should be, what children can or should do, and how they are trained to take their place in the world. Children also play a part in creating the archaeological record itself. In this volume, experts from around the world ask questions about childhood - thresholds of age and growth, childhood in the material culture, the death of children, and the intersection of the childhood and the social, economic, religious, and political worlds of societies in the past.




The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology


Book Description

Written by a team of experts and presenting the results of the most up-to-date research, The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology will both stimulate and support further investigation into a society poised at the interface between prehistory and history.




The Oxford Handbook of Children and the Law


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Children and the Law presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship on a broad range of topics covering the life course of humans from before birth to adulthood, by leading scholars in each area. Authors present and analyze the law and science pertaining to reproduction; prenatal life (including fetal exposure to toxic substances and abortion); parentage (including biology-based rights, background checks on birth parents, adoption, ART, and surrogacy); infant development; child maltreatment (including corporal punishment and religious defences to abuse and neglect); the child protection system and foster care; child custody disputes between parents; schooling (including financing, resegregation, religious expression in public schools, at-risk students, special education, regulating private schools, and homeschooling); delinquency; minimum-age laws; and child advocacy. It is an essential resource for scholars and professionals interested in the intersection of children and the law.




The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology


Book Description

Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.




The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology


Book Description

"This handbook brings together work by leading scholars of the archaeology of early Christianity in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions. The 34 essays to this volume ground the history, culture, and society of the first seven centuries of Christianity in the latest currents of archaeological method, theory, and research."--




The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Child Development


Book Description

Over 15 million children live in families subsisting below the federal poverty level, and there are nearly 4 million more children living in poverty today than in the turn of the 21st century. When compared to their more affluent counterparts, children living in fragile circumstances-including homeless children, children in foster care, and children living in families affected by chronic physical or mental health problems-are more likely to have low academic achievement, to drop out of school, and to have health and behavioral problems. The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Child Development provides a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms through which socioeconomic, cultural, familial, and community-level factors impact the early and long-term cognitive, neurobiological, socio-emotional, and physical development of children living in poverty. Leading contributors from various disciplines review basic and applied multidisciplinary research and propose questions and answers regarding the short and long-term impact of poverty, contexts and policies on child developmental trajectories. In addition, the book features analyses involving diverse children of all ages, particularly those from understudied groups (e.g. Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, immigrants) and those from understudied geographic areas (e.g., the rural U.S; international humanitarian settings). Each of the 7 sections begins with an overview of basic biological and behavioral research on child development and poverty, followed by applied analyses of contemporary issues that are currently at the heart of public debates on child health and well-being, and concluded with suggestions for policy reform. Through collaborative, interdisciplinary research, this book identifies the most pressing scientific issues involving poverty and child development, and offers new ideas and research questions that could lead us to develop a new science of research that is multidisciplinary, longitudinal, and that embraces an ecological approach to the study of child development.




The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial reviews the current state of mortuary archaeology and its practice, highlighting its often contentious place in the modern socio-politics of archaeology. It contains forty-four chapters which focus on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading, international scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods, such as the middle palaeolithic to the twentieth century, and geographical areas which include Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Combining up-to-date knowledge of relevant archaeological research with critical assessments of the theme and an evaluation of future research trajectories, it draws attention to the social, symbolic, and theoretical aspects of interpreting mortuary archaeology. The volume is well-illustrated with maps, plans, photographs, and illustrations and is ideally suited for students and researchers.