Archaeological photo of an infant skeleton. This infant burial is from Çatalhöyük , a Neolithic settlement in Turkey that was occupied continuously for 2,500 years, between 8000 and 6400 BCE. The infant was between six months and one year old, and the burial demonstrates great care. The infant was placed in a fetal position facing south and rested on a reed mat or basket. Red ochre, a mineral powder, had been used to decorate the body. Two anklets made of bone beads were placed around the feet, and large bead bracelets made of bone and colored stone in blue, black, and white encircled the infant's wrists.

11 centimeters high and 16.5 centimeters long (4.3 x 6.5 inches)

This object made from terracotta was most likely a child's pull toy. It features functional wheels and a hole at the mouth for a string. The buffalo shows traces of stripes in red paint, and has markings that represent its curly forelock.

Finely carved ivory doll with moveable arms and legs. The doll is well proportioned, with detailed carving of the face and an elaborate hairstyle. The doll's limbs are jointed at the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, and could have assumed many positions for active play.

http://www.metmuseum.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 10, 2009

The vast collection of the Metropolitan Museum is effectively arranged and integrated on the www.metmuseum.org website. Navigation of the site is straightforward, enabling efficient browsing or research. Although no specific essays or exhibits on children and youth are found on the site, several hundred artworks relevant to the topic can be located by searching the Collection Database or the Timeline of Art History (TOAH)—more than sites dedicated to the subject.

The Collection Database of 129,022 objects can be searched as a whole, by subject, by curatorial department, or by exhibit. The collection database search is comprehensive, and returned 3629 entries under "children." Childe Hassam is a distracter in this keyword search, but the search "Children NOT Childe" reduced the return to 319 items. "Boy" returned many distracters, but "girl" returned 954 items, and "infant" returned 252 items. "Toys" returned only 21 items, indicating a limitation of the museum's collection in that area. "Youth" returned 186 works and "young" 1741 items. The biggest drawback of the collection search was that many of the works are associated with placeholder images, although the metadata may help locate images elsewhere. As digitization of the collection proceeds, this may improve.

The TOAH is an unmatched resource for educators. The 6,000 included artworks are organized by three integrated elements: maps, timelines, and thematic essays. World and regional maps correlate artwork to eleven world eras and locate it in ten world regions. Timelines place the artworks in historical context, and include key events, political, stylistic and technological periodization. Eight hundred thematic essays provide historical context for groups of artwork and discuss characteristics, techniques, and significance. The essays reveal connections among civilizations and regions, and provide material for comparative study.

Educators searching for information on children in art can locate artworks featuring children and youth by a search of the TOAH, which seems more rewarding than the database search because all of the works are associated with images, and they are easily placed in context by TOAH's features. The searches are conveniently shown by category, so the user can bring up all relevant artworks, essays, timelines or other occurrences with one click.

A TOAH search of "children" found the term in 23 timelines, 153 thematic essays, and 396 works of art. "Figure, Child" in the Subject Index returned 21 essays and 80 works of art, each shown as a thumbnail image with titles. On the subject of childbirth, 15 artworks can be viewed. Terms such as "girl" (97 works), "boy" (9) and "young" or "youth" (4) returned artworks from across the globe and the eras.

An activity using the 97 artworks under "girl" might compare the relative age connoted by the term in various cultures and periods. Some depict small children, while others are clearly young women. A selection of western European drawings and paintings could focus on the changing definition of girlhood over time or explore symbols and objects associated with girlhood. Some of the artworks show girls in active social roles, playing sports and games, fulfilling ritual roles, or being mourned in funerary works. Some of the works are expressions of girls' work in various societies, such as needlework, preparation of trousseaus, or manual labor at home. In short, the collection can be used to gather ideas about girlhood over time and across cultures. Similar explorations about youth and boys could be made. Educators will find many ways to place childhood in historical context using this website.

Susan Douglass

George Mason University

Educators will find many ways to place childhood in historical context using this website.

Why I Taught the Source

Childhood is an ever-changing concept that varies from culture to culture across time and space, yet people often think of childhood as universal. Teaching students about children in the past is often a challenging endeavor for this very reason. I have developed an exercise that uses the material culture designed for children's care and use—diapers, baby food, clothing, toys—in order to investigate contemporary American childhood. Analyzing these sources of evidence using a material culture method challenges students to think critically about how childhood is understood in their own culture. This exercise demonstrates that childhood is culturally constructed by people living in a particular time and place and creates opportunities for students to think critically about the lives of children in the past. Simultaneously, this exercise provides an effective introduction to material objects as a primary source.

As a historical archaeologist, my aim is to teach students about people in the past by making use of the everyday material objects they made and used. Material culture objects can be understood in two primary ways. First, as functional items that help with particular tasks considered necessary and important. Second, as symbols encoded with meanings about social relationships and cultural values. Contemporary objects are subject to the same analyses and understandings, allowing them to serve as a gateway to the past.

How I Introduce the Source

I begin with a class discussion of the following four ideas written on the board so students may reflect on these points throughout the discussion.

Childhood is:

• Based on an assumed relationship to biology
• Culturally constructed
• Embodied and performed
• Materially coded and marked

I ask students to think about each point and to come up with examples. One way to generate discussion if students are struggling is to create opportunities to discuss children in contrast to adults. Some possible questions I have found to be effective are:

• What are things adults can do that children cannot (and vice–versa)?
• When, biologically, does someone become an adult? Is this different then when someone is socially recognized as an adult?
• When someone is behaving in a "child-like" manner, what does that mean?
• What types of clothing, hairstyles and accessories are appropriate for adults but not children (and vice-versa)?

This discussion is then followed by an exercise that is designed to acquaint students with the everyday lives of children. It can be presented as an in-class activity using objects or pictures of objects, an internet-based project using a series of websites, or an out-of-class activity that requires students to go to a store and "shop" for a series of items. I have found the web-based and shopping trip permutations to be the most effective because they allow students to engage with both objects and accompanying text. These latter two options also require no product purchasing or photocopying. For ease of presentation, I will use the web-based exercise as the primary example here.

I divide my class into smaller groups of three or four which makes for a more even distribution of topics of inquiry. Moreover, this exercise is most effective when multiple students examine the same source so that different perspectives might emerge. Each group is then assigned a particular type of material culture source to be investigated using a series of specified websites:

• Group 1: Diapers
  
  More images available at http://www.pampers.com/en_US/home/, www.huggies.com, and www.luvs.com
.
• Group 2: Baby Food
  
  More images available at http://www.gerber.com, www.beechnut.com, and www.enfamil.com.
• Group 3: Clothing
  
  More images available at http://www.childrensplace.com, www.mymiraclebaby.com, and www.babystyle.com.
• Group 4: Toys
  
  
  
  More images available at http://www.fisher-price.com and www.mattel.com.

Reading the Source

I present the idea that objects are both functional and stylistic and that each attribute of an object can tell us important things about their creators and users. In preparation for a class discussion that will focus on their findings, I handout the following guidelines to each group:

1. Discern the function(s) of each object. Function on the most basic level can be understood as what the object is designed to do. The function of diapers, for example, is to contain the excretions of a non-"potty trained" child. It is important, however, to go beyond the basic function to the more complex types of roles an object is supposed to fulfill.
2. Look at the style of the objects. These are aspects of the items that are not directly related to function (i.e., if these aspects were present, absent, or different the object would still function as intended but appear different). What types of ideas about children are reflected in these non-functional aspects of the items?
3. Who is supposed to use each item? Who is each item designed for? Are their "sub-groups" of users?

Reflections

Once students have completed their website investigations, I ask members of each group to report on their findings. I usually give each group a section of the board where members can write key observations about each question. Significant patterns inevitably emerge across the different categories of objects. Some of the most important are:

1. The category of "child" is subdivided in many ways. Some of these are biological: crawlers, toddlers, independent sitters, supported sitters, solid-food eater. Others are age-based: newborns, 2-4 months, 3+ years. And, still others are social: play ready, preschoolers.
2. All of these objects are designed to promote the proper development (physical, mental, social) of a child. There is a suggestion that there is a single normative way for children to progress and grow.
3. Childhood is a highly gendered stage in life from the moment of birth. Color schemes, decorative patterns, and functional designs all vary according to gender.
4. There is very little emphasis on the individuality of children, except how an individual child is progressing relative to developmental norms. These discussions often emphasize the role of the parents over the preferences of the individual child.

Each of these points relates to the general ideas about childhood introduced in the initial discussion. Taken together, this activity and the contextualizing discussions permit the revelation that childhood is not universal. Childhood in contemporary America is understood in biological and developmental terms, emphasizes gender, de-emphasizes children as cultural actors, and is seen as requiring an array of highly specialized objects. If childhood is culturally constructed, it can be constructed differently at different points in history. This revelation is important for students who are embarking on a study of children in other time periods or other cultures.

Jane Eva Baxter

DePaul University

200, 390, 389, 388

Mourning Rituals for Deceased Children

In the Han era of Jianning,
In the third year of our emperor's reign,
On this fifteenth day of the third month,
We pour out our grief for Xu Aqu.

You were only five years old
When you departed life's glory.
You entered a night without end,
Never again to see the sun or stars.

Now your spirit dwells all alone,
Underground, returned to eternal darkness.
You have left your home forever.
There is no way to ever look upon your face again.

We reported to our ancestors,
Anxiously thinking of you,
We increased our offerings and incense three times,
All to mourn the departed.

You, alas, did not recognize your ancestors,
But darted east and west, weeping and crying.
Finally you left with them,
Turning back to gaze on us from time to time.

Full of emotion, we, your father and mother…(inscription damaged).
All delicacies are tasteless to us.
Pale and gaunt, we have depleted our savings to build this shrine for you,
In the hope that your spirit will live on forever… (inscription damaged).

Visitors:
When you see dust on this grave
Please sweep it clean.
Your kindness will make the departed one happy.