Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World explores what it meant to be a child in the Roman world - what were children’s concerns, interests and beliefs - and whether we can find traces of children’s own cultures. By combining different theoretical approaches and source materials, the contributors explore the environments in which children lived, their experience of everyday life, and what the limits were for their agency. The volume brings together scholars of archaeology and material culture, classicists, ancient historians, theologians, and scholars of early Christianity and Judaism, all of whom have long been involved in the study of the social and cultural history of children. The topics discussed include children's living environments; clothing; childhood care; social relations; leisure and play; health and disability; upbringing and schooling; and children's experiences of death. While the main focus of the volume is on Late Antiquity its coverage begins with the early Roman Empire, and extends to the early ninth century CE. The result is the first book-length scrutiny of the agency and experience of pre-modern children.

Artefact evidence has the unique power to illuminate many aspects of life that are rarely explored in written sources, yet this potential has been underexploited in research on Roman and Late Antique Egypt. This book presents the first in-depth study that uses everyday artefacts as its principal source of evidence to transform our understanding of the society and culture of Egypt during these periods. It represents a fundamental reference work for scholars, with much new and essential information on a wide range of artefacts, many of which are found not only in Egypt but also in the wider Roman and late antique world. By taking a social archaeology approach, it sets out a new interpretation of daily life and aspects of social relations in Roman and Late Antique Egypt, contributing substantial insights into everyday practices and their social meanings in the past. Artefacts from University College London's Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology are the principal source of evidence; most of these objects have not been the subject of any previous research. The book integrates the close study of artefact features with other sources of evidence, including papyri and visual material. Part one explores the social functions of dress objects, while part two explores the domestic realm and everyday experience. An important theme is the life course, and how both dress-related artefacts and ordinary functional objects construct age and gender-related status and facilitate appropriate social relations and activities. There is also a particular focus on wider social experience in the domestic context, as well as broader consideration of economic and social changes across the period.

This book introduces readers to lived experience in the Late Roman Empire, from c.250-600 CE.

If you open this book, you will discover how living in the Ancient Roman times and today are worlds apart. Everything is very different, including the way people dress, talk and even entertain themselves. Societies were different as well as governments. Looking back into the past will lead to a deeper appreciation of the present and that’s why history matters. Grab this book today!

An investigation into slaveholding and slave experience in late antiquity, focusing on ideological, moral and cultural aspects of slavery.

This collection employs a multi-disciplinary approach treating ancient childhood in a holistic manner according to diachronic, regional and thematic perspectives. This multi-disciplinary approach encompasses classical studies, Egyptology, ancient history and the broad spectrum of archaeology, including iconography and bioarchaeology. With a chronological range of the Bronze Age to Byzantium and regional coverage of Egypt, Greece, and Italy this is the largest survey of childhood yet undertaken for the ancient world. Within this chronological and regional framework both the social construction of childhood and the child’s life experience are explored through the key topics of the definition of childhood, daily life, religion and ritual, death, and the information provided by bioarchaeology. No other volume to date provides such a comprehensive, systematic and cross-cultural study of childhood in the ancient Mediterranean world. In particular, its focus on the identification of society-specific definitions of childhood and the incorporation of the bioarchaeological perspective makes this work a unique and innovative study. Children in Antiquity provides an invaluable and unrivalled resource for anyone working on all aspects of the lives and deaths of children in the ancient Mediterranean world.

What does it mean to be “like a child” in antiquity? How did early Christ-followers use a childlike condition to articulate concrete qualifications for God’s kingdom? Many people today romanticize Jesus’s welcoming of little children against the backdrop of the ancient world or project modern Christian conceptions of children onto biblical texts. Eschewing such a Christian exceptionalist approach to history, this book explores how the Gospel of Matthew, 1 Corinthians, and the Gospel of Thomas each associate childlikeness with God’s kingdom within their socio-cultural milieus. The book investigates these three texts vis-à-vis philosophical, historical, and archaeological materials concerning ancient children and childhood, revealing that early Christ-followers deployed various aspects of children to envision ideal human qualities or bodily forms. Calling the modern reader’s attention to children’s intellectual incapability, asexuality, and socio-political utility in ancient intellectual thought and everyday practices, the book sheds new light on the rich and diverse theological visions that early Christ-followers pursued by means of images of children.