Lietuvos archeologija

In recent decades archaeology has focused increasingly on various insufficiently studied social aspects such as gender, women, children, and childhood. This has led to the creation of a new branch of archaeology: the archaeology of childhood, which studies various questions about children and their life, status, and role in society. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers an analysis of child burials in the Middle and Late Iron Age (5th–12th century) mortuary landscape, i.e. the network of cemeteries in Latvian territory, an analysis of the disposition and orientation of the child burials, and a discussion of the equal importance of children and adults in society. The paper proposes the hypothesis that age in the period under study played an important role and therefore not every child (presumably infants) was buried in the common cemetery. Older children were fully incorporated in the belief practices of the common society and as prepared for the afterlife as the adults.