Toys -objects that we can recognise and confi dently assert were toys, either through specifi c association with children, or through comparison with objects that we 'know' were toys in other periods -are absent in the sett lement archaeology of most pre-and proto-historic periods. There is good reason to argue that children played with things, so why is it so diffi cult for archaeologists to recognise things that children played with? This paper argues that being a 'toy' is a potential characteristic of all objects within a child's environment, and that this transient 'toy' stage is not irrecoverable and invisible in archaeological terms if the role of children in the depositional pathway of objects into the archaeological record is reassessed within a child-centred theoretical framework.

This paper presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the extent to which evidence for Late Medieval sub-seigniorial rural children's play might be observable in the archaeological record. It fi rst considers whether children in the Medieval period are likely to have engaged in play, and where they spent their time. Drawing on evidence from a range of disciplines including history, art history, folklore and archaeology it then investigates the nature of the activities likely to have been carried out during play and considers their likely physical manifestations. Excavations of three rural sett lement sites in southern England are then examined in order to establish whether any features recorded during excavation correspond to those which would be expected to result from the sorts of play engaged in by Medieval rural children. The paper concludes by affi rming why the correct identifi cation of evidence for children's activities is so important.

This chapter provides an overview of the development and growth of the archaeology of childhood as a discipline. It outlines the emergence of the inclusion of childhood and children in archaeological studies. Childhood is discussed in terms of the role of competence, as well as dependency, of children, and its relevance in archaeological interpretation. The notion of biological age and chronological age as definitions of childhood are discussed. This is followed by an introduction to the volume which provides an outline of the structure of the volume, its themes, the key areas discussed within the chapters, and the contribution this new volume makes to the discipline.

Anglo-Saxon archaeology can offer very few examples of deliberate, irretrievable deposition outside the mortuary arena, unlike the British and Continental archaeological evidence for the Roman and Iron Ages. With the exception of the furnished cemetery sites, Anglo-Saxon archaeology is notably short of 'ritual' deposits or structures until the arrival of Christianity, and we are equally short of ritual centres or sites expressing communal effort. It may be that any belief systems supported by the people inhabiting lowland England between the ending of Roman Britain and the Conversion left no surviving archaeological trace. In this context, however, furnished burials, accepted by archaeologists as a ritual display for an audience, may be ready for reinterpretation. Recent evaluation of Anglo-Saxon mortuary ritual has studied furnished burial almost solely in terms of conspicuous display, social organization and the relationship between the individual and the symbolic social messages of the goods with which they were buried. This paper argues that a rigid distinction between 'votive' and 'burial' deposition could be misleading, and that this distinction may be preventing us from seeing that the mortuary ritual should be recognized as an expression of a communal belief system, as well as carrying other important social messages.

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