Dear List Members:

Despite attempts by some to dismiss it, interpretive archaeology is 
not a fad; it may seem like it to those working within other 
intellectual traditions, but it's been around for a long time and has 
been growing within historical archaeology steadily over the past two 
decades.   I offer a very short bibliography on interpretive 
approaches to the archaeology of childhood (& in some cases gender, 
which always seems to intersect with issues around childhood), in 
archaeology generally as well as in historical archaeology, and a 
reference to a reader on interpretive archaeology.

This bibliography is very short because I did not have a great deal 
of time on my hands to locate citations to other sources of which I 
am tangentially aware; it's all stuff that I assign in whole or in 
part in my  class, Approaches to Artifact Analysis in Historical 
Archaeology.  The bibliographies in these sources of course lead to 
other sources; I especially commend you to Baxter's recent book on 
the archaeology of childhood.

I did not have time to annotate, sad to say.  I didn't include 
anything on artifact identification since Ron May covered that 
territory very well.

I should note that a student who studied the marbles, dolls, and 
other toys recovered from the site of the African Meeting House in 
Boston by Beth Bower came up with interesting results:  the spatial 
distribution  of these finds showed concentrations of marbles outside 
one door, doll parts and "girl's toys" (e.g., miniature tea set 
parts, etc.) outside another on the opposite side of the building. 
These artifacts all dated to the time during which the building was 
used as a synagogue.  What the student did not know before she did 
her study was that there were separate entrances for women and men 
(and boys and girls) at temple.  So she stumbled upon a "pattern" 
that reflected specific practices in this locale and that confirmed 
the assumed "gender attributions" of the finds.


Interpreting Artifacts of Childhood - A short bibliography

Baxter, Jane Eva.  2005.  The Archaeology of Childhood:  Children, 
Gender, and Material Culture.  Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
Calvert, Karin.  1992.  Children in the House:  The Material Culture 
of Early Childhood, 1600-1900.  Northeastern University Press, Boston.
Feister, Lois.  1991.  The Orphanage at Schuyler Mansion.  Northeast 
Historical Archaeology 20:27-36.
Howard-Carter S., 2004, Playing hard in West Oakland.  In Putting the 
"There" there: historical archaeologies of West Oakland, ed. by M. 
Praetzellis and A. Praetzellis, pp.177-179.  Anthropology Studies 
Center, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA.  Available on line 
at http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/cypress/finalreport/
Ingersoll, Daniel W., Elizabeth Attias, and Catherine Gravlin 
Billheimer.  1992.  Divining the Future:  The Toys of Star Wars.  In 
The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology:  Essays in Honor of 
James Deetz, ed. by Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, pp. 
427-443.  CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Kamp, Kathryn A.  2001.  Prehistoric Children Working and Playing: A 
Southwestern Case Study in Learning Ceramics. Journal of 
Anthropological Research 57(4):427-.
Moore J., and E. Scott (eds).  1997. Invisible People and Processes: 
Writing Gender and Childhood in European Archaeology.  Leicester 
University Press, London.
Praetzellis, Adrian, and Mary Praetzellis.  1992.  Faces and Facades: 
Victorian Ideology in Early Sacramento.  The Art and Mystery of 
Historical Archaeology:  Essays in Honor of James Deetz, ed. by Anne 
Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry,  pp. 75-99 [esp. pp. 88-98]. 
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Sofaer Derevenski J., 1997, Engendering children, engendering 
archaeology. In Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and 
Childhood in European Archaeology, ed. by J. Moore and E. Scott, pp. 
192-202.  Leicester University Press, London.
Sofaer Derevenski, J., ed.  2000.  Children and Material Culture. 
Routledge, New York.
Wilkie, Laurie A.  2000.  Not Merely Child's Play:  Creating a 
Historical Archaeology of Children and Childhood.  In Children and 
Material Culture, ed. by J. Sofaer Derevenski, pp. 100-114. 
Routledge, New York.
Yamin R.  2002.  Children's Strikes, Parents' Rights: Paterson and 
Five Points. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 
26(2):113-126.

Of perhaps general use on interpretive approaches in archaeology:
Thomas, Julian, ed.  2000.  Interpretive Archaeology:  A Reader. 
Leicester University Press, London.



-- 
Mary C. Beaudry, PhD, RPA, FSA
Professor of Archaeology & Anthropology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215 USA
tel. 617-358-1650
fax 617-353-6800
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