Thought to be the first of its kind in the UK, the exhibition “Hide and Seek: Looking for Children in the Past” takes a look at how the concept of childhood has changed over the last million years, and how visible children are in the archaeological record.
Children outnumbered adults for most of human history, yet they rarely appear in the stories that museums tell. A past without children is incomplete. This exhibition aims to redress the balance.
Some objects on display will be familiar: a doll, a sledge, a baby’s feeding bottle. Other artefacts won’t look like children’s objects: pots with small fingerprints, a tiny handaxe made 400,000 years ago, goldwork as fine as a human hair. By looking carefully at all of this evidence, we will find out about children’s lives.