Traces of childhood. Search for children in the archaeological record and study of ceramic artefacts (bronze age of the South Trans-Urals)

Purpose: This work concerns identification and interpretation of children's imprints of fingernails on the ceramic artifacts. Archaeologically, we can see two basic groups of artifacts directly related to children: items made by children themselves during their training or playing and items made by adults for their children: toys, clothes details, ornaments, amulets and pottery. But it seems quite difficult to find «childe-made» categories of artifacts. In our opinion, traceological way of investigation will be useful for this search and do our interpretations more successful. Children's finger and nail prints on the ancient ceramics is evidence of child contact to material, in other words, evidence of his/her direct participation in the process of creation. Results: To find children's imprints of fingernails, we processed ceramic collections of the following Bronze Age archaeological sites: Kamennyi Ambar and Streletskoe 1 settlements, Kamennyi Ambar 5 and Stepnoe 7 cemeteries. We could identify the only vessel with child nail prints from children's tomb in the Kamennyi Ambar burial ground. But at the settlement three ceramic artifacts with nail prints were discovered: a half of the small pot, a little jar and a miniature plate. All of them were dug in the fill of the Sintashta dwelling 5. At the Streletskoe 1 settlement a small jar and a little decorated plate with children's nail prints were found. Also we could identify the only vessel with child's nail prints in the Stepnoe 7 cemetery (in the child grave). According to width and thickness of the nail print, all nail prints could belong to children 6-8 years old or a little older. All items were not in use as pottery. Besides this, we could identify some items which possibly were made by adults for their children. There are a small jar and balls for playing, the miniature artifact with knobs and pinpoints and so one. Conclusion: Our work demonstrates that direct traces of children's activity can be found in the archaeological record and rather at the settlements than in the cemeteries. As a result, we can conclude that children were involved in the ceramic production since early age as well as in the ritual activity of the society, including mortuary rites. As regards the position of children in the Sintashta, Petrovka and Alakul' societies, we can suppose that there were differences related to attention to children. It may be quite possible that in the Sintashta society the vertical hierarchy relations dominated and that's why children's burials were relatively rich in terms of grave goods. Petrovka and Alakul' children's burials were more numerous but rather modest. They rather reflected gender/age and horizontal social positions of children. In general, we can conclude that children's activity played a great part in the everyday life of the Bronze Age societies of the South Trans-Urals.