The Siberian Paleolithic site of Mal'ta: a unique source for the study of childhood archaeology

Lbova, Lyudmila

doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.5

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…While we have not systematically investigated adults' use of miniatures in ritual or quotidian contexts, the prominence of miniatures in our dataset lends credence to the interpretation of objects at the lower end of a given size distribution as play-objects, such as the scaled-down spear-thrower handles from the Oregon Coast (100-800 CE) discussed by Losey and Hull (2019) and the small organic spear-tips of the European Late Upper Palaeolithic (18-15 ka BP) presented by Langley (2018) and Pfeifer (2015) respectively (see Milks et al, 2021 for further examples). In addition, the cross-cultural prevalence of human and animal figurines aligns well with interpretations of many Palaeolithic (Farbstein et al, 2012;Lbova, 2021) and post-Palaeolithic (see Langley & Litster, 2018;Sommer & Sommer, 2015) figurines as potential play objects, alongside the more common interpretation of prehistoric figurines as religious/ritual objects. Close attention to specific contexts will help us distinguish toy and religious figurines from each other, as well as the potentially salient interplay between play and religion (Renfrew et al, 2017) in the future.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Toys as Teachers: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Object Use and Enskillment in Hunter–Gatherer Societies

Riede

Lew‐Levy

Johannsen

et al. 2022

J Archaeol Method Theory

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Studies of cultural transmission—whether approached by archaeological or ethnographic means—have made great strides in identifying formal teaching and learning arrangements, which in turn can be closely aligned with models of social learning. While novices and apprentices are often in focus in such studies, younger children and their engagement with material culture have received less attention. Against the backdrop of a cross-cultural database of ethnographically documented object use and play in 54 globally distributed foraging communities, we here discuss the ways in which children make and use tools and toys. We provide a cross-cultural inventory of objects made for and by hunter–gatherer children and adolescents. We find that child and adolescent objects are linked to adult material culture, albeit not exclusively so. Toys and tools were primarily handled outside of explicit pedagogical contexts, and there is little evidence for formalised apprenticeships. Our data suggests that children’s self-directed interactions with objects, especially during play, has a critical role in early-age enskillment. Placed within a niche construction framework, we combine ethnographic perspectives on object play with archaeological evidence for play objects to offer an improved cross-cultural frame of reference for how social learning varies across early human life history and what role material culture may play in this process. While our analysis improves the systematic understanding of the role and relevance of play objects among hunter–gatherer societies, we also make the case for more detailed studies of play objects in the context of ethnographic, archival and archaeological cultural transmission research.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Toys as Teachers: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Object Use and Enskillment in Hunter–Gatherer Societies

Riede

Lew‐Levy

Johannsen

et al. 2022

J Archaeol Method Theory

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“…Albeit situated further back in time, and firmly outside the range of ethnohistorical information, our archaeological case from the fourth millennium BCE also bears witness to the interplay between material affordances, technologies and understandings of cause and effect. Detailed studies on remarkable materials such as the figurines from Mal'ta by Lbova ( 2021 ) hint at how far back in time we may be able to bring such perspectives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children and innovation: play, play objects and object play in cultural evolution

et al. 2021

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Cultural evolutionary theory conceptualises culture as an information-transmission system whose dynamics take on evolutionary properties. Within this framework, however, innovation has been likened to random mutations, reducing its occurrence to chance or fortuitous transmission error. In introducing the special collection on children and innovation, we here place object play and play objectsespecially functional miniaturesfrom carefully chosen archaeological contexts in a niche construction perspective. Given that play, including object play, is ubiquitous in human societies, we suggest that plaything construction, provisioning and use have, over evolutionary timescales, paid substantial selective dividends via ontogenetic niche modification. Combining findings from cognitive science, ethology and ethnography with insights into hominin early developmental life-history, we show how play objects and object play probably had decisive roles in the emergence of innovative capabilities. Importantly, we argue that closer attention to play objects can go some way towards addressing changes in innovation rates that occurred throughout human biocultural evolution and why innovations are observable within certain technological domains but not others.

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“…That is true even if they were well made. Especially in transegalitarian societies, children's material culture may well include carefully crafted items made from expensive materials (see in particular the discussion and examples in Lbova, 2021 ). Likewise, secret places, with evidence of fire and other human activities, but without domestic detritus, may be children's spaces.…”

Section: Identifying Children Their Roles and Their Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Veiled agency? Children, innovation and the archaeological record

Sterelny

2021

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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Children and subadults were obviously part of ancient human communities, and almost certainly, in important ways their activities were distinctive; they did not routinely act like scaled down adults. But their presence was quite cryptic, but not entirely hidden. Their lives and acts did leave traces, though these tend to be be fragile, ambiguous, and fast-fading. In addition to pursuing the methodological issues posed by the detection of subadult lives, this special issue raises important questions about the role of children, and their willingness to experiment and play, on innovation. It is true that ethnographically known forager children are almost certainly more autonomous, experimental, and adventurous than WEIRD children, and this was probably true of the young foragers of the early Holocene and late Pleistocene, too. Their greater willingness to experiment probably fueled a supply of variation, and perhaps occasionally adaptation as well, especially finding new uses for existing materials. Much more certainly, innovations tend to be noted, taken up, and spread by adolescents. They were vectors of change, even if perhaps only rarely initiators of change. Keywords Forager childhood, forager social learning, forager innovation, children and innovation, archaeology of children Social Media Summary Forager children were freer than the regimented children of the west, and so were important in spreading, and perhaps initiating, change.

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The Siberian Paleolithic site of Mal'ta: a unique source for the study of childhood archaeology

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

Toys as Teachers: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Object Use and Enskillment in Hunter–Gatherer Societies

Toys as Teachers: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Object Use and Enskillment in Hunter–Gatherer Societies

Children and innovation: play, play objects and object play in cultural evolution

Veiled agency? Children, innovation and the archaeological record

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