berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction: The (Bio)Archaeology of Adolescence
Creighton Avery and Dana Thacher

Chapter 1. Adolescence in the European Upper Paleolithic: Are There Temporal and Spatial Trends?
Jennifer French and April Nowell Appendix

Chapter 2. From Childhood to Adulthood in Iberia During the Bell Beaker Period (2500–2000 cal. BC) 34
Ana M. Herrero Corral

Chapter 3. A Tale of Two Cities: Exploring the Biological and Social Transformations of Adolescence in the Roman Empire
Creighton Avery

Chapter 4. Being and Becoming: The Archaeology of Adolescence in the Ancient Andes
Sarah I. Baitzel, Bridget C. Bey, and Allisen C. Dahlstedt

Chapter 5. Viking Age Adolescence: An Osteoarchaeological Assessment of Puberty in a Gotlandic Viking Age Community
Marieke Ivarsson-Aalders

Chapter 6. Crime, Punishment, and Adolescent Wrongdoers in Early Medieval England
Dawn Hadley

Chapter 7. The Body and Gendered Ideology as Expressed Through Adolescent Commemoration in Victorian and Edwardian England
Dana Thacher

Chapter 8. Transitional Youths: Defining “Adolescence” in Nineteenth-Century New York City Through Skeletal Remains
Meredith Ellis

Conclusion: The (Bio)Archaeology of Adolescence: Challenges and Opportunities
Kathryn Kamp

Final Remarks
Index

Small Adults or Big Kids?

Exploring Archaeological and Bioarcheological Approaches to Adolescence

Edited by Creighton Avery and Dana Thacher  

224 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-287-9 Hb Published (December 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-288-6
web ISBN 978-1-83695-288-6

Details

Adolescence is a critical period of the life course, encapsulating biological and social changes as individuals transition from childhood to adulthood. While the archaeology of childhood is a rapidly growing field, there has been little formal discussion on how adolescence may be biologically or socially defined and the spatial and temporal variability within these definitions. This book explores the meaning of adolescence through the analysis of material culture, historical documents, skeletal remains, isotope analysis, and other lines of evidence. Considering the implications for archaeologists and biological anthropologists, this book investigates the lived experiences of adolescents in the past to further our understanding of past societies.

Creighton Avery is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and an Osteoarcheologist with Stantec Consulting Ltd. Recent publication includes a field guide Bioarcheology of Infants and Children for the series of Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques for the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and Cambridge University Press.

Dana Thacher is Researcher at McMaster University in Canada and Field Technician for Archaeological Research Associates. Her most recent work uses historical cemetery data combined with primary historical sources to explore why some children and adolescents received a gravestone following their death when others did not. She specializes in historical archaeology, statistical methods, and mortuary archaeology and has previously published in Arctic (2018) as well as the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2017).

Subject: Anthropology (General) Archaeology Sociology

Area:

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC003000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Archaeology; SOC047000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Children's Studies