Session: #187

Content:

While the role of children within the family and societies of ancient times has recently been the focus of innovative scholarship in social and cultural history as well as in archaeology, the phenomenon of ancient child labour has attracted less attention. This panel aims at investigating the integration of young children into the economic contexts of antiquity and to shed light on the circumstances in which freeborn and enslaved children grew up not only as individuals and members of their families, societies and peer groups, but as ‘market players’ and members of ancient business communities. Considering that minors may have made up to 40% of the population of the ancient world, their role in the economic world is often overlooked. Thus, the typical image of ancient childhood is still presented as boys engaged in in athletics and military training or writing exercises, and girls being taught textile crafts such as spinning. The papers in this panel, on the other hand, will start from a different assumption: children’s involvement in work in antiquity, where hazardous or not, might have served as a mechanism though which children were integrated into their communities and acquired skills and knowledge that ensured basic survival. While nowadays child labour is usually considered exploitation, ancient societies might have had a different attitude. This also offers potential insights into the common attitudes towards childhood and children within these societies.
The proposed session particularly invites contributions that make use of epigraphical and papyrological sources, but will likewise welcome evidence offered by legal texts, visual representations, and archaeological findings, including osteology and anthropology, to uncover the variety of children’s contributions to ancient economies from the Iron Age to Byzantine times.

Session: #187

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