Lesley A. Beaumont - Böcker

This collection employs a multi-disciplinary approach treating ancient childhood in a holistic manner according to diachronic, regional and thematic perspectives. This multi-disciplinary approach encompasses classical studies, Egyptology, ancient history and the broad spectrum of archaeology, including iconography and bioarchaeology.With a chronological range of the Bronze Age to Byzantium and regional coverage of Egypt, Greece, and Italy this is the largest survey of childhood yet undertaken for the ancient world. Within this chronological and regional framework both the social construction of childhood and the child’s life experience are explored through the key topics of the definition of childhood, daily life, religion and ritual, death, and the information provided by bioarchaeology. No other volume to date provides such a comprehensive, systematic and cross-cultural study of childhood in the ancient Mediterranean world. In particular, its focus on the identification of society-specific definitions of childhood and the incorporation of the bioarchaeological perspective makes this work a unique and innovative study.Children in Antiquity provides an invaluable and unrivalled resource for anyone working on all aspects of the lives and deaths of children in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Childhood in Ancient Athens offers an in-depth study of children during the heyday of the Athenian city state, thereby illuminating a significant social group largely ignored by most ancient and modern authors alike. It concentrates not only on the child's own experience, but also examines the perceptions of children and childhood by Athenian society: these perceptions variously exhibit both similarities and stark contrasts with those of our own 21st century Western society. The study covers the juvenile life course from birth and infancy through early and later childhood, and treats these life stages according to the topics of nurture, play, education, work, cult and ritual, and death. In view of the scant ancient Greek literary evidence pertaining to childhood, Beaumont focuses on the more copious ancient visual representations of children in Athenian pot painting, sculpture, and terracotta modelling. Notably, this is the first full-length monograph in English to address the iconography of childhood in ancient Athens, and it breaks important new ground by rigorously analysing and evaluating classical art to reconstruct childhood’s social history. With over 120 illustrations, the book provides a rich visual, as well as narrative, resource for the history of childhood in classical antiquity.

This collection employs a multi-disciplinary approach treating ancient childhood in a holistic manner according to diachronic, regional and thematic perspectives. This multi-disciplinary approach encompasses classical studies, Egyptology, ancient history and the broad spectrum of archaeology, including iconography and bioarchaeology.With a chronological range of the Bronze Age to Byzantium and regional coverage of Egypt, Greece, and Italy this is the largest survey of childhood yet undertaken for the ancient world. Within this chronological and regional framework both the social construction of childhood and the child’s life experience are explored through the key topics of the definition of childhood, daily life, religion and ritual, death, and the information provided by bioarchaeology. No other volume to date provides such a comprehensive, systematic and cross-cultural study of childhood in the ancient Mediterranean world. In particular, its focus on the identification of society-specific definitions of childhood and the incorporation of the bioarchaeological perspective makes this work a unique and innovative study.Children in Antiquity provides an invaluable and unrivalled resource for anyone working on all aspects of the lives and deaths of children in the ancient Mediterranean world.