This volume describes broader themes and histories in the archaeological and anthropological study of childhood. Some of these broader issues include how archaeologists have situated childhood studies within the discipline, how archaeologists have identified children through the archaeological record, and how the archaeological study of childhood leads to interdisciplinary conversations across the subfields. The collection of essays addresses long-standing omission of children in the study of social, economic, religious, and political studies of the past.

As such it is an important contribution to scholars of research methods, the history of the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology, social historians and those interested in cross-cultural perspectives on children.