Abstract:
In-depth analyses of childhood in the archaeological record, particularly in the Southeast, are lacking in contemporary scholarship. Recently, the archaeology of childhood has been building, providing a series of foundational texts that outline critiques and options for advancing our understanding of children in the past. This thesis builds on these critiques and examines the Late Archaic children’s burials belonging to sites in the Pickwick Basin of the Tennessee River in Alabama: The Bluff Creek Site (1LU59), the O’Neal Site (1LU61), Meander Scar (1LU62), Wright Mound No. 1 and 2 (1LU63 and 1LU64, respectively), the Long Branch Site (1LU67), and the Little Bear Creek Site (1CT8). The primary objective of the project was to determine if there was any patterning at the site, multi-site, or local scale in the burial goods and the skeletal pathologies of the children who lived and died at these sites. The presence or absence of these patterns was used to discuss whether or not a community of practice directing the approaches to child-rearing or children’s burials could be ascertained. These practices were examined using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including Sherratt diagrams, correspondence analysis, and chi-square testing. The research found that there were no overarching patterns in burial goods, skeletal pathology, or the two, that encompassed all the sites in the study. However, there is evidence to suggest that there were some broader patterns of behavior at a multi-site scale that encompassed multiple sites. Despite some shared cultural practices surrounding children in life and death, it appears that children’s experiences largely depended on the site at which they were. The lack of consistent, overarching patterns between all sites indicates that there was not a singular community of practice that directed the practices surrounding children’s bodies in life, nor was there a single mortuary community of practice that directed the burial of children. However, there are examples of a shared repertoire between multiple sites in the sample that indicate some knowledge and practices influencing surrounding children in life and death may have transcended site boundaries in the Late Archaic Pickwick Basin.
