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Growing Up in the Ice Age: Fossil and Archaeological Evidence of the Lived Lives of Plio-Pleistocene Children
Winner of the 2023 European Association of Archaeologist’s Book of the Year Award
In prehistoric societies children comprised 40–65% of the population, yet by default, our ancestral landscapes are peopled by adults who hunt, gather, fish, knap tools, and make art. But these adults were also parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who had to make space physically, emotionally, intellectually, and cognitively for the infants, children, and adolescents around them.
Growing Up in the Ice Age is a timely and evidence-based look at the lived lives of Paleolithic children and the communities of which they were a part. By rendering these ‘invisible’ children visible, readers will gain a new understanding of the Paleolithic period as a whole, and in doing so will learn how children have contributed to the biological and cultural entities we are today.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Jane Baxter
1. Toward an archaeology of Paleolithic children
2. Birth and the Paleolithic ‘family’
3. Toys, burials and secret spaces
4. Stone tools, skill acquisition and learning a craft
5. Children, oral storytelling and the Paleolithic ‘arts’
6. Adolescence in the Ice Age
7. Paleolithic children as drivers of human evolution
Appendix 1. Chronology of the Paleolithic and timeline of fossil hominins
Appendix 2. Table of subadult fossils in the Plio-Pleistocene (perinatal–ca. 10 years)
Appendix 3. Table of subadult fossils from the Plio-Pleistocene (ca. 10 years–20 years).
Bibliography
Index
In prehistoric societies children comprised 40–65% of the population, yet by default, our ancestral landscapes are peopled by adults who hunt, gather, fish, knap tools, and make art. But these adults were also parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who had to make space physically, emotionally, intellectually, and cognitively for the infants, children, and adolescents around them.
Growing Up in the Ice Age is a timely and evidence-based look at the lived lives of Paleolithic children and the communities of which they were a part. By rendering these ‘invisible’ children visible, readers will gain a new understanding of the Paleolithic period as a whole, and in doing so will learn how children have contributed to the biological and cultural entities we are today.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Jane Baxter
1. Toward an archaeology of Paleolithic children
2. Birth and the Paleolithic ‘family’
3. Toys, burials and secret spaces
4. Stone tools, skill acquisition and learning a craft
5. Children, oral storytelling and the Paleolithic ‘arts’
6. Adolescence in the Ice Age
7. Paleolithic children as drivers of human evolution
Appendix 1. Chronology of the Paleolithic and timeline of fossil hominins
Appendix 2. Table of subadult fossils in the Plio-Pleistocene (perinatal–ca. 10 years)
Appendix 3. Table of subadult fossils from the Plio-Pleistocene (ca. 10 years–20 years).
Bibliography
Index
384 pages, Paperback
Published June 14, 2021
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159 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 4, 2026
So, this is an academic publication and neither written nor edited for a popular market; that being said, there is a lot in here for anyone truly interested. This is my field and I have to separate critique I might share among colleagues from general commentary for this forum, so bear with me.
Nowell presents us here with a synthesis of widely interdisciplinary work to address Plio-Pleistocene (roughly 5 million years ago until about 12,000 years ago) childhood beyond the simple forensic study of pre-adult human remains; rather than what they were like when they died, she delves into what kids and adolescents did when they were alive (and before they became adults) in earlier human history. While she's not presenting primary data, her citations and references are a gold mine of the real stuff. While archaeological materials such as skeletal remains, artifacts, environmental data, cave art and such hold primacy, Nowell supplements the discussion with work in ethnography, developmental psychology, neurology, and the sweeping re-evaluations in all these fields over the last 30 years given advances in tools and research questions.
How did human (and human ancestor) offspring interact with adults, the environment, and each other? How did they learn necessary skills? How did they act as vectors of innovation or continuity? What roles did they play in the evolution of culture, communication, art, and their descendants' genome? All good questions and all addressed to some degree in here.
The Big Takeaway: Growing Up in the Ice Age does not provide clear answers or settle scores but rather presents a world of changing perspectives on human development and how one can look into the various aspects of it. It is an imperfect work and clunkier in writing and presentation than needed be, but the value lies behind that. This is great grist for the mills of discussion and further research and a very welcome addition to the study of human prehistory.
Nowell presents us here with a synthesis of widely interdisciplinary work to address Plio-Pleistocene (roughly 5 million years ago until about 12,000 years ago) childhood beyond the simple forensic study of pre-adult human remains; rather than what they were like when they died, she delves into what kids and adolescents did when they were alive (and before they became adults) in earlier human history. While she's not presenting primary data, her citations and references are a gold mine of the real stuff. While archaeological materials such as skeletal remains, artifacts, environmental data, cave art and such hold primacy, Nowell supplements the discussion with work in ethnography, developmental psychology, neurology, and the sweeping re-evaluations in all these fields over the last 30 years given advances in tools and research questions.
How did human (and human ancestor) offspring interact with adults, the environment, and each other? How did they learn necessary skills? How did they act as vectors of innovation or continuity? What roles did they play in the evolution of culture, communication, art, and their descendants' genome? All good questions and all addressed to some degree in here.
The Big Takeaway: Growing Up in the Ice Age does not provide clear answers or settle scores but rather presents a world of changing perspectives on human development and how one can look into the various aspects of it. It is an imperfect work and clunkier in writing and presentation than needed be, but the value lies behind that. This is great grist for the mills of discussion and further research and a very welcome addition to the study of human prehistory.
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August 31, 2024This is quite dry (it’s more scholarly than popular science), but
a) it’s astonishing how much information archeological research can plausibly draw from scant remains and reasonable inference, and
b) there’s something evocative and touching and human about evidence of things like an adult female holding a child on her hip as they both make art on a cave wall, or a sick puppy nursed back to health by, perhaps, an adolescent 14,000 years ago.
a) it’s astonishing how much information archeological research can plausibly draw from scant remains and reasonable inference, and
b) there’s something evocative and touching and human about evidence of things like an adult female holding a child on her hip as they both make art on a cave wall, or a sick puppy nursed back to health by, perhaps, an adolescent 14,000 years ago.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews