Abstract
In this chapter, the story of the schoolroom at the nineteenth-century Spring Street Presbyterian Church in New York City begins the exploration of children, childhood, and bioarchaeology. This chapter surveys what is known about the church and the importance of children in the church during the early nineteenth century. It also introduces the four underground burial vaults that were discovered in 2006 and some 200 commingled individuals that were excavated from the site. Finally, this chapter sets up the theoretical framework explored throughout the rest of the monograph, which includes embodiment, life course analysis, and, importantly, social age categories for examining a range of childhoods. An argument is made for a more nuanced approach to childhood through social bioarchaeology and careful historical analysis.
Bioarchaeology can successfully address complex questions about past children’s lives, experiences, and impact on their community. Using these multiple lines of evidence and nuanced interpretation of the available data, the children of the past are finally “seen” and “heard.”
—Thomson et al. (2014), p. 11
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Notes
- 1.
Thank you to Alanna Warner-Smith for this insight.
- 2.
Special thank you to Tony Chamoun for talking through this insight with me.
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Ellis, M.A.B. (2019). Introduction. In: The Children of Spring Street. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92687-2_1
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