I am astounded by this thread.  Contextual analysis might encourage 
reflexivity, but I do not think that our own childhoods should form 
the basis for artifact interpretation, unless, of course, we are just 
analyzing ourselves (which is fine, so long as it is not disguised as 
the study of 19th-century or other childhoods).  The  variability of 
experiences among list members underscores my point that we must 
attend to context and avoid the tendency to universalize human 
experience.

There is a growing body of literature on the archaeology of children 
and childhood as well as a substantial body of literature on artifact 
interpretation that explicitly rejects one-to-one formulations of 
artifacts according to function, gender associations, age, etc., and 
of the approaches that posit rigid connections between objects and 
their meanings and uses (e.g., boys with marbles-marbles often used 
by adults for gambling, for instance-archaeological, cultural, and 
historical context of finds fosters nuanced interpretations).

A good example of a contextual, interpretive analysis of marbles is 
Yamin's article in the International Journal of Historical 
Archaeology (forget exact citation).  There's Jane Baxter's book on 
the archaeology of childhood, Laurie Wilkie's & the Praetzellises' 
work, etc., etc.  Anthropological archaeologists had, I thought, 
developed techniques for avoiding presentism and are attempting to 
avoid essentializing schema in their work.

I can provide a bibliography (on interpretation, not just 
identification) if list members are interested.

MCB