E-Books →Experiencing Childhood in Ancient Athens Material Culture, Iconography, Burials, and Social Identity in the 9th to 4th

The research presented compares the range of objects associated with children at different times and in different contexts to suggest how children's identities - and how Athenian society conceptualised them and childhood - changed throughout the Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods, as the Greek polis system was established and Athenian democracy developed. The evidence considered suggests childhood became an increasingly distinct stage in the ancient Greek life course throughout the period 900 to 323 BCE but it also demonstrates that children did not necessarily became more prominent in Attic society as a consequence. It suggests that children's identities, and the symbolism of them, in many ways remained constant; with children always prized for the stability and continuity they represented but appreciated for their role in perpetuating society with increasing frequency over time and more when society was under threat.
Ultimately, the author suggests major socio-political change impacted children's experiences of childhood and what it meant to be a child in ancient Athens primarily because of how it affected the agency of their family members, especially the women responsible for caring for them: warfare and political transformation concentrated in the Classical period gave women more agency to influence the range of material culture made for children, making characterisations of them in art at once more realistic and more common, even when other evidence suggests children were in fact probably less visible in society.
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