have not published on the history of childhood before. Because their normal research is outside the discipline, these writers bring fresh perspectives to the material, which is to be commended: it is intriguing to see authors approaching their familiar texts through what is, to them, the new lens of childhood. Certainly, many of the contributors express the feeling that they are amongst the first to investigate their subject. However, for those who work in the discipline, there are uncomfortable gaps in the volume’s concluding bibliography. Important, relevant published research (and not only in English – there are major contributions to the field, especially in German and French) is overlooked, even where earlier scholarship actually fills the ‘gaps’ suggested by some of the current authors. The lack of familiarity with current and developing theories in the field is also evident in too many of the papers, which are effective at identifying the places where perceptions about children and childhood are revealed in the sources, but much less effective at recognizing that context is everything. It is often not what the sources say about childhood that is interesting, but why it was said – the social, political, economic, or religious factors which caused writers to feel the need to comment, at this time, and in this way, on the nature of childhood, which can be most revealing, but in many of the chapters this possiblity is barely grasped. Fortunately, the best is saved until last in the shape of Nicholas Orme’s wise and scholarly final chapter on medieval childhood. Anyone reading or reflecting on the history of childhood for the first time would do well to begin with this chapter. Orme surveys the evidence for the period, identifying points where documents record new or changing perspectives on childhood, particularly noting the increasing regulation about children, and visibility of children, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is the point at which Orme asks the crucial question missing from many of the previous chapters – not what changed for children, nor what changed about childhood, but why does the question of children and childhood appear in the documentary sources at all? As Orme notes, most of the lives of most children (and their families) would have been completely unaffected by the majority of new regulations, which developed ‘for reasons largely independent of children themselves’. Children were rarely married young before legislation was introduced to prevent it, babies were baptized before it became mandatory to do so, and parents were proud of their children before the medium of the tomb brass gave them an affordable way of expressing it. The cultural construct of childhood does change over time, and attitudes towards children change, but these changes happen because of wider social and economic shifts experienced by society as a whole.

中文翻译：

---

儿童、死亡与埋葬：考古学论述

以前没有发表过关于童年的历史。因为他们的正常研究是在学科之外，这些作家为材料带来了新的视角，这是值得称赞的：看到作者通过对他们来说是童年的新镜头来接近他们熟悉的文本是很有趣的。当然，许多贡献者表达了他们是第一个调查他们的主题的人的感觉。然而，对于那些在该学科工作的人来说，该卷的结论书目中存在令人不安的空白。重要的、相关的已发表研究（不仅是英语——对该领域有重大贡献，尤其是德语和法语）被忽视了，即使早期的学术研究实际上填补了一些当前作者提出的“空白”。在太多论文中也明显缺乏对该领域当前和发展中的理论的熟悉，这些论文可以有效地确定来源中揭示对儿童和童年的看法的地方，但在识别背景方面的效果要差得多。一切。有趣的通常不是消息来源所说的关于童年的内容，而是为什么这么说——社会、政治、经济或宗教因素使作家感到有必要在此时以这种方式评论童年的本质，这可能是最能说明问题的，但在许多章节中，这种可能性几乎没有被理解。幸运的是，最好的东西以尼古拉斯·奥姆（Nicholas Orme）关于中世纪童年的智慧和学术的最后一章的形式保存到最后。第一次阅读或反思童年历史的人最好从本章开始。Orme 调查了这一时期的证据，确定了文件记录了对童年的新观点或不断变化的观点的点，特别是注意到十四和十五世纪对儿童的日益监管和儿童的知名度。在这一点上，Orme 提出了许多前几章中缺失的关键问题——不是儿童发生了什么变化，也不是童年发生了什么变化，而是为什么儿童和童年的问题会出现在文献资料中？正如 Orme 所指出的那样，大多数儿童（及其家人）的大部分生活将完全不受大多数​​新规定的影响，这些新规定的制定“原因在很大程度上与儿童本身无关”。在立法禁止之前，孩子们很少在年轻时结婚，婴儿在强制执行之前就接受了洗礼，在墓碑黄铜的媒介给他们提供了一种负担得起的表达方式之前，父母就为他们的孩子感到自豪。童年的文化结构确实会随着时间的推移而改变，对儿童的态度也会发生变化，但这些变化的发生是由于整个社会经历了更广泛的社会和经济变化。