9th May 2005, 09:22 PM
To answer Deep first-that`s a bit of a myth. Infant/juvenile and sub-adult (depending on your terminology) will survive equally as well as adult remains dependent largely upon the burial environment and of course, taphonomic processes. The skeletal remains of ickle people are not always recognised as such by practitioners in the field or, are completely overlooked by report-writers as irrelevant. For Lucy, all of the above really but- as archaeologists we assume that children have no real role to play in the greater scheme of things.It would appear that the players in prehistory and history were simply born adult. In this sense, how do we identify children as even existing in the archaeological record? Of course, there are toys, historical and art-based images of games and the like but-thats just not enough! Where are all the children in our discourse? I think that the conference will be published in a BAR soon...Children used as sacrifices in South American temples-what is the "special"significance of children? The shaft graves of Mycenae and the gold-covered children-what was the perceived status of children? Five infants wrapped and deposited in a bog in Norway-what does this mean? p.s no wacko jacko puns please.....