Main description:

Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World explores what it meant to be a child in the Roman world - what were children's concerns, interests and beliefs - and whether we can find traces of children's own cultures. By combining different theoretical approaches and source materials, the contributors explore the environments in which children lived, their experience of everyday life, and what the limits were for their agency. The volume brings together scholars of archaeology and material culture, classicists, ancient historians, theologians, and scholars of early Christianity and Judaism, all of whom have long been involved in the study of the social and cultural history of children.

The topics discussed include children's living environments; clothing; childhood care; social relations; leisure and play; health and disability; upbringing and schooling; and children's experiences of death. While the main focus of the volume is on Late Antiquity its coverage begins with the early Roman Empire, and extends to the early ninth century CE. The result is the first book-length scrutiny of the agency and experience of pre-modern children.

Contents:

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

1. A New Paradigm for the Social History of Childhood and Children in Antiquity

Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto

2. Agency, Experience, and the Children in the Past. The Case of Roman Childhood

Ville Vuolanto

Setting the Scene: Experiences and Environments

3. Children and the Urban Environment: Agency in Pompeii

Ray Laurence

4. Little Tunics for Little People: the Problems of Visualising the Wardrobe of the Roman child

Mary Harlow

5. Touching Children in Roman Antiquity: the Sentimental Discourse and the Family Christian Laes

6. Being a Niece or Nephew in an Ancient City. Children's Social Environment in Roman Oxyrhynchos

April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto

What Did the Roman Children Actually Do?

7. Leisure as a Site of Child Socialisation. Agency and Resistance in the Roman Empire

Jerry Toner

8. Roman Girls and Boys at Play: Realities and Representations

Fanny Dolansky

9. Age, Agency, and Material Culture in the Roman World: the Graffiti Evidence from Roman Campania

Katherine Huntley

10. Why Roman Pupils Lacked a Long Vacation

Konrad Voessing

11. Becoming a Roman Student

W. Martin Bloomer

Religious Practices and Sacred Spaces

12. Roman Children as Religious Agents: The Cognitive Foundations of Cult

Jakob Mackey

13. Jewish Childhood in the Roman Galilee. Sabbath in Tiberias (c. 300 CE)

Hagith Sivan

14. Resistance and Agency in the Everyday Life of Late Antique Children (3rd-8th c CE) Beatrice Caseau

15. Children in Monastic Families in Egypt at the End of Antiquity