Baxter’s second edition will introduce a new generation of students and scholars to the richness of studying children in the past. This volume highlights the enormous body of work done on childhood since the first edition, including an entirely new chapter on bioarchaeology and mortuary studies. It is an essential, accessible resource for anyone studying childhood, and additions like the Learning Activities make this an invaluable tool for the classroom.

Meredith A.B. Ellis, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Florida Atlantic University

Jane Eva Baxter, a foremost scholar of past childhoods, explores the diversity of childhood and adolescence across time and space in a sophisticated, up-to-date, and well-referenced, yet accessible, new edition of the now-classic, The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender, and Material Culture. This volume is a must-read for every anthropologist.

Kathryn Kamp, Earl D. Strong Professor of Social Studies, Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College

Soon after its publication, the first edition of Jane Baxter’s The Archaeology of Childhood took its place as a foundational text in our discipline, one that I found myself returning to again and again for my own research and teaching. Almost two decades later, this second edition is much more than a simple update of the earlier publication but rather it is the skillful interweaving of robust theory, innovative methods, detailed case studies and critical insight based on years of the author’s research. This has resulted in a thoughtful, nuanced, and multi-layered approach to studying children and childhood in the past. While the first edition argued for the potential of child focused studies in archaeology, the second edition richly demonstrates how this potential has been realized and points to a future when studying children and their contributions will become a routine and unremarkable part of what we do as archaeologists. In changing our practice, this book is nothing short of revolutionary.

April Nowell, professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Canada

The second edition of Jane Eva Baxter's pioneering volume has everything you loved about the original and so much more. Baxter deftly explains how the field of Childhood Studies has matured in the last twenty years since the first edition and she uses the latest examples from the second generation of scholars in this field throughout the entire volume. Baxter's voice as an archaeologist and scholar has also matured, and she uses her position as a key figure in the Archaeology of Childhood to encourage new scholarship while also continuing to explain to those not familiar with this field, why every archaeologist is doing the archaeology of childhood. This book is an instant classic.

Traci Ardren, Professor of Anthropology, University of Miami