Palaeolithic Children Come of Age

Comprising at least half of the population of prehistoric societies, children were ubiquitous on Palaeolithic sites. Despite an extensive record of their lifeways, studying children in the deep past presents archaeologists with unique challenges including differential preservation, the use of children as holotypes, interpretive bias, choice of model for the pace of growth and development, difficulties of defining what is means to be human in the Palaeolithic and the necessity of moving between ethological and ethnographic analytical frameworks. This paper reviews both the difficulties and the prospects of studying children in deep time.