Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World

Christian Laes is an associate professor of ancient history and Latin at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and an adjunct professor in ancient history at the history department of the University of Tampere, Finland. He has studied the social and cultural history of Rome and Late Antiquity, paying particular attention to the human life course: childhood; youth; family; slavery; old age; sexuality; and disabilities. His monographs, and over 70 contributions have been published by international publishers and journals.Ville Vuolanto is research fellow at IFIKK, University of Oslo, Norway, and adjunct professor in general history at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has published a number of articles on the history of the family and childhood in the Roman and early medieval periods, and is now writing a monograph on children in Oxyrhynchos (with April Pudsey). His latest book Children and Asceticism in Late Antiquity: Continuity, Family Dynamics and the Rise of Christianity was published in 2015.

" ... on account of its impressive thematic breadth, the high-level quality of its contributions throughout, and its deep, critical engagement with issues of method and theory, Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of childhood. From the big questions that it raises to the experiential details that it captures, the volume richly repays its readers for their imaginative journey through these ancient children’s lives."- Sinclair Bell, Northern Illinois University, USA, 'Childhood in the Past' journal, 2017

• List of FiguresAbbreviationsNotes on Contributors1. 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 Environments3. 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 VuolantoWhat Did the Roman Children Actually Do?7. Leisure as a Site of Child Socialisation. Agency and Resistance in the Roman EmpireJerry 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 Vössing 11. Becoming a Roman Student W. Martin BloomerReligious Practices and Sacred Spaces12. 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) Béatrice Caseau15. Children in Monastic Families in Egypt at the End of Antiquity