The study of childhood in historical archaeology enriches interpretations of the past, but also has the potential for contributing to the understanding of methodological and theoretical issues in archaeology. Archaeologically, children are understudied relative to both their demographic and social importance, partly because children are viewed as difficult to discern in the archaeological record. Historical archaeology, with its access to historical documents to supplement and illuminate archaeological evidence, provides an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the ways children's daily lives in the past were expressed in historically changing types and patterns of material culture. Recent research presented in this volume contributes valuable perspectives for conceptualizing the historically changing social nature of childhood and methods for illuminating the roles of children. Case studies are designed to illustrate methodological and theoretical advances in the historical archaeology of materialized experiences, discourses, identities, places and their meanings associated with parenting and childhood.

Chapter 1. Introduction to the historical archaeology of children, childhood and parenting.- Chapter 2. Childhoods in Bioarchaeology: The Importance of Categorizing and Analyzing Age.- Chapter 3. Early Medieval English childhood and grave goods: mortuary symbols of emotion, affection and parenting?.- Chapter 4. Materializations of Changing Western Patriarcal Beliefs about Children, Childhood and Parenting, Socialization Practices and Diverse Children's Social Agency.- Chapter 5. The manager's children: family space and a private life in the nineteenth-century asylum.- Chapter 6. San Pedro Maya Youth in British Colonial Yucatan.- Chapter 7. Practicality and ideology: Examining site selection for American children's institutions.- Chapter 8. Children of the Ludlow Massacre: Socialization, Americanization and Immigrant Children in Early 1900's Colorado's Coal Mining Communities.- Chapter 9. Between Maori and Missionary Worlds: The chiefly childhoods of Rongo Hariata Hongi and Ripero Hongi in early nineteenth century Bay of Islands, New Zealand.- Chapter 10. The Science of Child-Rearing: Mothering in the late 19th -early 20th century.- Chapter 11. The Rise of the Child Consumer and Interpretations of 19th -20th Century U.S. Domestic Sites.- Chapter 12. Incarcerated childhoods: The discourse, experience, and material culture of children's play in a WWII Japanese American Internment Camp.- Chapter 13. Parental Investments and Childhood Responses on the Frontier: The Relationship between Children, Parents, and Context.- Chapter 14. Children in Context: Lessons for All Archaeologists from a Historic Perspective.