The Archaeology of Play Things: Theorising a Toy Stage in the 'Biography' of Objects

Abstract

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.

The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

“…Much of children's object‐centered activity leaves no traces. Often, children's play objects consist of repurposed adult material culture or objects that are only minimally or not at all modified …”

“…Given the pervasiveness of play, it is more than likely that prehistoric children also played with objects, whether they were unmodified, made by themselves, repurposed adult materials, or provided to them by their peers, older children, or adults. In principle, any object may have been used as a play object at some point . Our focus here is, among other things, on complex technologies having functions that emerge only in the interplay between their different components, which, in isolation, do not hold salient functional cues.…”

Magdalenian Children: Projectile Points, Portable Art and Playthings

“…Because these items are used in the context of peer group play, however, the opportunity also exists for children to create and experiment with alternative scenarios and actions they have not seen in the adult world and which the adults did not anticipate (Baxter ; S. White ). However, simply using size as an indicator for child material culture is unreliable, as miniatures could also be made and used by adults for votives or in other ritualistic contexts (Crawford ; Sofaer Derevenski ).…”

“…Along other lines, it may be that such items were not made specifically for children, but instead entered a ‘toy stage’ at the end of their use‐life in the adult world, but prior to final abandonment. A broken, worn or unvalued object may be deliberately passed on to a child, though as Crawford () argues, to determine archaeologically whether a specific object passed through such a child‐associated stage may be impossible. On the other hand, the high degree of polish observed on the miniature bâton percé and portable art presented herein, may indicate a child's intensive and prolonged play with that item (think simply of modern beloved children's toys), and might prove a valuable factor in future identification of items utilized by children.…”

“…Why, then, do we not have a list of children's material culture – children's playthings or toys – for the Upper Palaeolithic? The simplest explanation for the lack of Palaeolithic playthings is not that there were no toys, or that their toys have not survived in the archaeological record, but that archaeologists are simply not looking for or able to recognise them (see Crawford for a similar argument regarding Anglo‐Saxon children, and Shea for Palaeolithic flintknapping).…”