Making childhood: exploring children’s lives and deaths in eastern England in the Bronze and Iron Ages

This thesis explores the lives and death of children during the Bronze and Iron Ages, focussing on a study area in eastern England. It develops bespoke methods for analysing fingertip impressions and fingerprints found on prehistoric pottery assemblages, in order to explore the roles of children within communities of practice engaged in pottery making. It also investigates the status and treatment of the child’s body on death through analysis of human remains from across the study area. Bringing together data highlighting activities in which children were involved, with information on how their bodies were treated on death allows a discussion to be developed around the evidence for culturally recognised stages of childhood, and links between the experiences of the young living body with contemporary perceptions of the young dead body.