Middle Helladic Children’s Burials: Challenges Associated with Reconstructing Lived Experiences from Mortuary Contexts
Date
2022-07-18
Authors
Martin-Damman, Sally
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Abstract
While the sub-field of childhood archaeology continues to grow and make progress, the children of Greece during the Middle Helladic period (2,100-1,600 B.C.) remain understudied. The goal of this research was to use mortuary contexts from the intramural cemetery at Ancient Asine in the Argolid province in Greece to gain a better understanding of the lived experiences of children. Using mortuary data including age of the deceased, grave type, spatial arrangements and grave items from the excavation reports of Asine from the 1920’s I was unable to make any firm conclusions about why certain grave types may have been chosen or what their burial location might mean. This speaks to the way in which children were treated in archaeological excavations of the past and to the challenges that childhood archaeologists are facing now while having to use this older data to gain any perspectives from the lives of the children.
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Childhood, Mortuary contexts, Middle Helladic, Intramural