Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Little Ancestors and Chosen Ones - Ep 27
189 Plays2 months ago
The Wizards have been in touch again, and so this episode Ash and Tilly have been tasked with finding the one who can save the world and bring all of humanity together - The Chosen One. The catch is, all they know is that The Chosen One is a child, but they have no idea where to find them. Luckily, they can use their archaeological knowledge to identify the presence of children in the past, and apply that to their search. But how can you find children in the past? Listen in to find out!
Books Mentioned
- Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
- Percy Jackson series (Rick Riordan)
- His Dark Materials series (Phillip Pullman)
- The Shannara Chronicles (Terry Brooks)
- Gregor the Overlander (Suzanne Collins)
- Hunger Games series (Suzanne Collins)
- Star wars films (George Lucas)
Links
- Landscapes of Childhood paper
- Children in archaeological lithic analysis paper
- Playing with Flint paper
Contact
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @and.my.trowel
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/trowel/27
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You have my sword. And you have my boat. And my trowel. Hi, you're listening to episode 27 of And My Trial, where we look at the fantastic side of archaeology and the archaeological side of fantasy.
The Quest for the Chosen One
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm Ash. And I'm Tilly. So today, Tilly, our quest is quite a fraught one. Oh no, I don't like the sound of that. Neither do I. But unfortunately, the balance of the realms is in our hands today.
00:00:32
Speaker
I know. no pirate I know, right? I received a parchment from the wizards again. Ugh, not those fireball teasers. What do they want now? They want us to find the chosen one. Sorry, the chosen one? Wait, you mean like the secret heir, the one who will restore balance to the world? ah Exactly that one, yeah. Well, sounds easy. Shall we get lunch on the way? but but Wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on. Wait, you're doing something particularly worried about this.
00:01:01
Speaker
Why would I? Come on, it's hardly going to be difficult. There's at least one new chosen one every other month around here. All we need to do is go out, spot the big brooding reluctant hero who happens to be carrying around a great gleaming sword or something, or start at the prancing pony inn, grab some lunch, bish, bash, bosh, we found a chosen one.
Identifying the Chosen One in History
00:01:19
Speaker
Did the mages say anything about what they looked like? I don't think we'll find them in a pub, Tilly. They're apparently a child.
00:01:25
Speaker
All right. Well, okay. All right. So how do we go about finding this chosen one kid? Well, that's the question, right? How do we usually recognize children in the archaeological record?
00:01:41
Speaker
gosh Oh my gosh, not even that archaeological record. How do you even recognise children in the fantastical record? Because they're also not that common really. Yeah, well that that's a good point Ellie. So what fantasy books have you read that feature the concept of the chosen one but particularly a child as a chosen one?
00:02:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, I guess to be honest, the first one that springs to mind is, of course, Harry Potter, because yeah he is called the chosen one and he is a baby when he's chosen. But then the whole point is that it's like as he grows up, he then sort of, well, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read it. It's as he grows up that he decides whether or not he becomes the chosen one. So actually, he didn't need to have been the chosen one. It turns out all along, which I thought was quite hilarious. But anyway,
00:02:26
Speaker
It also that subverts the trope of the chosen one because usually they don't have a choice. yes like They are that and that is it yeah as their destiny, yeah yeah which is so somewhat disappointing. I'm trying to think what other... I don't think I actually read that many books.
00:02:42
Speaker
where it's the chosen one. Usually the ones that I read have more of a kind of reluctant hero one, but they're not they're not the chosen one necessarily. Although, they oh no, but that one's not about a child. I was thinking of, I think I mentioned it in a previous episode, that radio show,
Chosen One Tropes in Literature
00:03:00
Speaker
which I've forgotten the name of again, where it's the chosen one and it turns out to be the main character's dog. And get transported to this fantasy universe and then the dog becomes a person and that's the one. Oh I mentioned it in the Dark Lord episode because there's a Dark Lord in there who's hilarious and he's played by someone famous who's really good at comedic timing and everything and anyway sorry but not a not a not a child and the whole point is right.
00:03:23
Speaker
Well, no, I mean, that's kind of where it develops, I think. So like often the chosen one narrative happens from birth up until adulthood. Like it follows their whole life. So they'll have like, you know, really underrated birth. They're probably an orphan or some kind of thing like that. And then they're probably an apprentice or some kind or working in some sort of job that they don't like. A servant. Yeah. Or something like that. Yeah. Or something, farm boy.
00:03:51
Speaker
we readad princes bride recently that you and things like that And then the someone meets them and then it's usually a wizard or like someone who is a gnarly old figure who's yeah We are wise and understand this myth or whatever, or has hidden them. A lot of the times that's the case, so you've got like the Obi-Wan Kenobi. So someone's hidden them and now they're hidden there.
00:04:22
Speaker
And usually the heir to something either amazing or something terrible. So I was thinking of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Oh, of course. Yeah, that's a good one as well. Because he's the son of Poseidon. He's hidden. He doesn't know until he reaches a certain point where he is no longer really considered a child. And that's really interesting because that's the concept that we're going to focus in a little bit on today. What is a child, essentially?
00:04:49
Speaker
true because actually yeah like how do you even because I mean even I mean even sticking with fantasy books I'm just thinking of like young adult fiction and things and most of the time in those books the characters are who I would now as a you know 30s someone in my 30s would just be like that is a child but at the time when I was reading them I was like yes this character understands me I'm an adult like go out and do my own thing and you're like darling you're 15 years old you are not i love him no you don't say seen ariial shirt up
00:05:22
Speaker
Exactly! King Triton knew what he was on about! He knew! He knew! He was you're one lover in like five years time. Trust me, you're gonna go through all this stuff, he's gonna make you cut your legs off. I know, sacrifices no way. So indeed even even the concept of what an adult is in fantasy fiction is already, it's so dependent on the perception of the person reading it as well.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah. And
Perceptions of Childhood and Adulthood
00:05:50
Speaker
a lot of fantasy fiction is also set in a medieval-esque world. So usually you have these kind of regimented when you become a man or when you become a woman or when you become a adult, you know, in in the in the in the story and the trope. And it's usually some sort of acceptance of oneself or reaching a certain age. Usually these but obviously it diverts a bit from the child chosen one who is like around about 8, 11 usually. yeah like When they're becoming gw you go into a young adult fantasy fiction, it's often they're hitting the ages of 16, or they're coming up to 16, or they're coming up to 18, which is usually our modern perception of when someone becomes an adult, then put back into a medieval setting. yeah that makes sense Which then, yeah, is not, although that's like all the
00:06:43
Speaker
like all of the ones about Romeo and Juliet and things right as well I mean I know that that's not fantasy really but like yeah she's basically all these historic novels and everything and you're like actually she would have been 13 because it's like oh ah hang on no but not that's thing yeah so we have to we sort of have to detach what adulthood is to us and what is childhood. And we need to look at that in order to find this chosen one. So other books, just notable books quickly, we've said Harry Potter, we've said Percy Jackson, the Northern Lights, his Dark Materials. Yes, true. I never really thought of that, but I guess she is the chosen one, isn't she?
00:07:18
Speaker
Yes, by ah Philip Pullman, right? She's the chosen one in a way, but she sort of takes on that rule too. Usually that's the acceptance part of it. You get the Shannara Chronicles by Terry Roots. I still haven't read that one. I need to read the book. Yeah, they did a TV show. It was terrible. i Also, I thought this was good because it's by Suzanne Collins, who did The Hunger Games, which is your reluctant hero, but chosen one, which is Katniss Everdeen. Right. Gregor the Overlander.
00:07:46
Speaker
Have you ever read the they very that kids books? It sounds like a comedy book. It kind of is. yeah there's There's some fun elements to it, but it's like you know it's ah it's a young children's book yeah and basically he finds this subterranean portal world essentially and he's the chosen one from that because he is from above land.
00:08:06
Speaker
yeah Okay, There's a lot of different concepts that you can kind of look at and and how do you think it's developed over time and fantasy?
Evolution of Fantasy Tropes
00:08:18
Speaker
Well I guess, well yeah have we just said probably the the the kids have gotten older in that respect. I don't know really, it's sort of Like what you were talking about before with the with the trope and everything of, you know, they always are orphan or they're always in some horrendous spot or anything. But I can imagine maybe in sort of earlier fantasy or early folklore, it was more about like, oh, this is the prestige, like you're sort of chosen to be the chosen one actually from a much yeah younger age. And it almost related to kind of, I guess, themes of royalty or nobility and yeah in that respect. Like that's the only thing I could really think
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like the print and the pauper sort of thing or like even um just sort of a film with that man in the iron mask and how these people are hidden and and hidden away and then given power by some sort of force or something. yeah But you see the same tropes in adult fantasy as well. Usually it's the same sort of person. They're kind of an underdog. The biggest one I can always think of is Luke Skywalker. he Basically Star Wars is that medieval fantasy in here as a child from the very beginning. oh Yet Leia right there, also his twin, nothing.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, because she's a woman, don't you think a can't be a chosen one? No, well, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, it doesn't seem likely actually that a chosen one for some reason. And then yeah, so a lot of the kind, well, we've said a few different books there, most of them are boys. I'm now trying to think of of um chosen ones I mean, actually, and ter about you do have the Tiffany aching series, but indeed, she's not necessarily the chosen one. She's more just the only one. really It's sort of the last resort. I'm sorry. basically it's sort of like, okay, you're the only one that's around, like therefore, but then she is kind of the chosen one. It's sort of almost that trope. And that starts with her as a, as a kid. That's what I'm sort of yeah trying to think. that That's also kind of what Terry Pratchett does. He inverts the tropes, doesn't he? He makes them quite funny because you're like, well, you'll do. all right and You have to deal with this. Why? Because you're the only one here. yeah And it could even be that in our modern sensibility, there's something about when boys become men and when girls become women. yes And so like definitely you see that boys are sort of given adulthood earlier in books, potentially like 12 years old, 13 years old.
00:10:52
Speaker
Well, girls, when they reach, I don't know, even though girls are technically, they're meant to, what isn't that the idea that they always mature faster or whatever? Girls are seen as maybe more YA books. It's that point where they're reaching like 15, 16, 17, 18, that they're coming into their own. And I don't know why our modern sensibility sees that. Maybe I'm just generalizing. no but i might be because you always sort of think, oh, little boys, they'll want to read more about, you know, great adventures and all of that kind of thing when they're 12, 13 already. But of course, little girls wouldn't want to read about that. They'll be reading about horses and ponies and, you know, that kind of thing. They'll only be interested in that stuff when they're older. So maybe that's sort of... Yeah, there's a gender bias with it, definitely, that does not fully reflect actual reality. Yeah, exactly. No, there's plenty of people that want to play around with swords. I mean, that's why most of us become archaeologists, I think. Because we want to. But
00:11:52
Speaker
and and And, yeah, the whole thing of age and and just how it is, I mean, also in in history and in prehistory as well, right? It's that kind of assumption that they're a child when they're this age. And it's also that so that gender bias, which we've talked about in a previous episode, is also pretty pretty big there, I think, when you think, like, oh, no, but she was just a young girl. And it's like, well, she probably had three kids by then. Like, it's she she wouldn't have thought herself as a young girl. Society wouldn't have, yeah. Yeah. Whereas a young boy is like, oh, he's on his way to becoming a warrior. And it's like, well, how is that?
00:12:22
Speaker
How is that same, the same? Like, how is that fair? um So, yes.
Archaeology and Childhood Exploration
00:12:27
Speaker
So, well, it sort of seems that we're going to be trying to find a needle in a haystack. Could be anywhere. Could be any age. Where on earth do we start? Well, I'm going to check the Western archives. You put the tea on and we'll be be right back. Right. Okay, Tilly. So I was thinking...
00:12:45
Speaker
We're archaeologists, right? Pretty much the concept of this whole show, Ash. Ha ha, hysterical.
00:12:55
Speaker
Rude. But to you, right? but I don't think we're thinking like archaeologists. That's why it feels like such an insurmountable task to find the chosen one. So if we think of it like this, right? We know children existed, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Right? Yeah. So think of it had like two episodes ago, okay, when we were talking about gender and feminist archaeology. Think about how that's opened up representation for women in diverse groups. So think of it like this. We know children were a significant part of a human social group. They exist. We know that they lived, they contributed, and were active agents in that past. They had to be. So to ignore them means that we'd be cutting out a huge part of our interpretation of that past.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, now so we're basically talking about the archaeology of childhood. Yeah, exactly. And we use that concept to find the chosen one just like we would in archaeology. Okay, but what exactly does the archaeology of childhood cover though? That also seems like quite a broad subject.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, it is quite broad. So the archaeology of the childhood is pretty much the study of childhood, children, child rearing and related topics. Yes. Well, that does still seem like quite a broad topic. Yeah, it is. It is not like undeniably is. However, it's really important because, you know, children aren't really included readily in social models like our fictions or even given credit in the archaeological record a lot of the time.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, true. It's always about like adults in society and blah, blah, blah. And I can guarantee that if you start thinking about a certain society, you'll probably think of the adults rather than the children. They're sort of not really talked about, or not really thought about. Right? And it's funny, actually, you should say this. So I don't want to be one of those people who's like, I have a mother, I've had children. But I must say, after I had kids,
00:14:45
Speaker
I suddenly started like noticing more things that you sort of I guess I never really thought about before because it's just not something that comes up like that you really think about so like I remember you know I was breastfeeding my kids and that means you have to have clothing that allows you to easily breastfeed so you don't have to just like undress every time you want to feed your child. And if you look at like quite a few replicas of prehistoric clothing and things like that, they're always quite like, not tight necessarily, but there's a lot of ones where you're like, you and I was looking at it going, you there's no way you'd be able to breastfeed in that, like, which is just sort of funny, like, it's not something that I ever thought about before. But then once you have that experience, you're suddenly like, Oh, that's, that's
00:15:30
Speaker
so Yeah. I often think with the brooches, like Viking replica stuff, the brooches that pin, I think they'd be really easy because you can just flip down the like top of the apron. They're basically the the the breastfeeding bras, which just have like a little clip on the on the thing. Like you do have a shift underneath it.
00:15:48
Speaker
ah you Yeah, that's easily moved. you can just been to the side yeah yeah And I think that's something that obviously gender archaeology, feminist archaeology and the archaeology of childhood look into. Because there's a lot of things in the archaeological record that we don't really like, we can kind of discard a lot of the time, because of our own modern bias. Yeah. no But you know, looking at the archaeology of childhood, it highlights the evidence of children, essentially. So you're looking at nearly every category of archaeological data we have has children in it. We won't really look at it as in depth. So it's in this realm of study that looks at places, things like skeletal remains, burials, landscapes, buildings and even artefacts.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, true. you have a lot of Although what I also find is that you also have a lot of artifacts which are just labeled as like, oh, they must have been children's toys, which you're like, well, like it's sort of it's both ways, right? that you have <unk>re They're almost seen as like, ah oh, we're not going to study them in too much detail, but if we need them for something, we're just going to label it as that. It's almost like ritual.
00:16:54
Speaker
like Yeah it's kind of discarded and there's nothing else to it but there's so much more to it and we can talk about that a little bit later as well because there's this idea of play and creation that goes on especially in prehistory so when we're thinking of like the chosen one something that they would have maybe grown up with what do they do what is their you know when are they working when are they children what activities are they doing right now and what age could they be, and then it relates to how we find them and how we find them in the landscape. hu which If we know that they're probably going to be working in some kind of low-end job or something like that based on the trope, then we start with those kinds.
00:17:38
Speaker
places, yeah those kind of tasks. But the first thing to really think about is, well, the concept of childhood. Okay. So what is considered a child within the archaeological record? I actually don't know. I have no idea what a child would it be someone who's still dependent on an adult for survival? Like, ah no, but then that could also be an older person as well. like ah Exactly. Right. So at childhood, for us,
00:18:07
Speaker
as archaeologists, we have to realise that childhood is variable. yeah So it changes when it begins, when it ends, you know, sometimes, I mean, when I was doing my dissertation, my undergrad dissertation was about Anglo-Saxon female burials, ah but especially deviant burials. And that was often, the women were often buried with a child. Now it might not be their child. It could be somebody else's child. It could be their child. It could be often coffin births as well, things like that when they die when they're pregnant. But how they relate to that burial was essentially showing you if they even considered the baby as a person, if that child had personhood. So it needs to be so the idea of life and when it begins is a really risky topic. yes But archaeologically, we still don't know who how people in the past, in different societies, recognise when childhood begins.
00:19:02
Speaker
Because even if they're born and whatever, then maybe even then they're still not actually a person or not actually a child. They're still not a child. They're like an infant that is not seen as its own person. They're like a flesh package of something. Screaming meat. They become a spirit, which as a mother I can say. Yeah, they are connected to you. There's often when you see neonatal or postnatal like kind of burials, they don't really have a lot of grave goods or they'll have a particular grave good that might relate to their childhood stage. So there's sometimes there's amber beads and things like that in, especially in Anglo-Saxon burials, which is really interesting. But then that means that, you know,
00:19:48
Speaker
it's it's deeply variable. So in fantasy, you see the child, the chosen one is often given quests. And that is signals the end of chartered. Okay. yeah Okay. shot Yeah, they're not a child anymore because they're being given, they're workable, you know, fit to work. Off you go. Just the the way you were just saying given that you were talking about grave goods and stuff, quite often they're also given something when they're born or when they're given away or when they're, you know, when they are a child, when they are a baby, that then is like a way of identifying them, you know, later. So they might also have something on them as well that would be like a
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, like a bracelet. There's often in lots of different cultures that give children bracelets and it's almost when they they get chubby enough, the bracelet breaks. And then they're no longer in that state of an aspect of childhood. okay yeah yeah So there's a good book, if anyone hasn't read it, it's really good. It's called Rethinking the Little Ancestor. It's all about archeology and infancy. It's by Archeoprice. I believe it's free access in certain chapters. We can have a look. If it is, we'll put it in the show notes. yes But I took a quote from them because I think this is quite a good one. So they say, rather, children's experiences are many and they are likely to have been treated very differently in diverse social and material situations. Any category of age also needs to be an analysed in relation to other social variables such as sex, class and ethnicity. Hmm, yeah.
00:21:23
Speaker
which yeah makes sense. I mean, even, well, it's a bit what we were talking about before, right? Like, you know, when you're a certain person, you think of something else. I mean, even if we think of, I'm just looking back to our last episode where we were talking about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I was rereading Pride and Prejudice recently, and I'm currently rereading Persuasion. And they talk about how Anne Elliot is, you know, has basically a spinster at, you know, 26 or whatever it is, where it's always be like, that's your prime, you know, like That's when you start doing whatever so it Even that, even just in the last however many hundred years, we've already changed our perception of age and how how that depends on your social status and your situation and all of these kinds of things.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I think even reflectively looking back on it, we think of spinster as a bad thing, but actually spinster just means you were able to spin and have your own business. and Yeah, which I love. Have your own business, spin, and you're independent. So very cool. But then if we're looking at child burials, how, oh, child, children, I've just given it away the whole whole game there. Oh my gosh, child burials. So how would you find a child in the archaeological
Child Burials and Societal Implications
00:22:35
Speaker
record? like How would you mean how you go about it? Well, if you the skeleton, I guess, is the sort of most obvious one because usually they're...
00:22:46
Speaker
Well, but even then, I guess you you see how old they are biologically, but then you would still need to know a bit about the social background to determine whether or not that is actually a child, like in the eyes of the society kind of thing. Yeah. But you can at least work out the age, like how old they were by a skeletal analysis. So, which I've actually done recently. I, because I had to redo it as part of my job, I had to learn a little bit again about osteoarchaeology. And so I was, we have a lot of skeletons that we, that we're going to sort of get through.
00:23:15
Speaker
the company I work for and yeah we had to lay them all out and I had to identify all the bones and stuff but then also we had a couple of children and then I had to try and work out you know age and gender and all of this kind of thing and what was funny actually is was at the time my own daughter was just getting all of her teeth and so I was able to use my knowledge of that to be like well they have the same with teeth as my daughter now has so they must be around too and they were like yeah exactly well done it's like yes And that's cool. Yeah, it's like teeth and the skull being fused. Yeah, how many bones fuse together in different ways and things. Gender or sex is a very difficult thing to do in child care. For children, yes. Yeah, you yeah cannot. You can't do that. Which is interesting because then that also could reflect societally how people are viewed, but you don't know. Yeah, true. Well, I mean, even now, must say, my kids are always, they're both girls and it's always like, oh, who's this little boy? And I'm like, yeah, well, yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker
thank for gen Children don't have genders. They don't look like boys or girls when they're little. They just look like babies. You baby. Yeah, basically. You are a baby. You are not a person yet. You are a baby. ven Yes, you are a baby. I'm sometimes still a baby. So can you think of like any like examples of burials that you might know of? And I must admit, I don't really know. Oh, well I know that there's sort of a couple of ones, I can't remember specific examples, but I remember ones of of from the Neolithic where there was one of a child who was buried on like swan wings, I think. can I kind of love that. That's my favorite burial. That's the thick burial, swan wing burial.
00:24:50
Speaker
I have an embroidery of that. My friend did it, it was beautiful. It was mother and child, my favourite burial. Sorry. Oh my God, I love dead people. But what is interesting is that I know that when we were excavating somewhere and we found quite a lot of child burials and they were all in this particular place. And the excavation leader said, oh, that must be where this must have been where the church wall was then, because they would bury the children's burials closest to the wall so that they would be more protected from the roof.
00:25:26
Speaker
So, also, location of burial in relation to buildings and things could be something else. Yeah, that's actually really interesting. The example that I have is similar, but actually it's the Mesolithic burial in Skatehome. So, essentially, the children are buried. There's this huge burial site. There's two different phases. And the earlier phases, the children are buried at like under the age of five, skeletaly. They're buried marginally like at the borders of the two named burial sites, which they don't really know why. And then when the next phase happens, they're buried at the other side marginally. And they're often actually buried with with dogs or near dogs and separated entirely from the adult burials.
00:26:14
Speaker
god it up like protection or so Well, it's interesting because it must be significant and meaningful because, you know, people would be like, oh, well, if we look to that modern sensibilities, we think, oh, well, they're nothing but dogs. That's that's not how it seems. ah In fact, the children's burials and the dog burials are the richest burials in the whole. Okay. Interesting.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, right. So that doesn't mean that children, or even dogs, were exceptional or alike in life, but that the burial shows certain requirements, special requirements, and then there's some sort of pattern between non-human and human children that have some sort of social identity and status in that burial practice. Interesting. Obviously, we can't find the chosen one, skeletal-y, because they're still alive.
00:27:03
Speaker
Hopefully they're still alive, yes. yeah but but still a alive Can you imagine if we went through all of this and then turned out? Oh wait, we'll just get the zombies in. That'll be fine. Zombie chosen one. yeah but But that kind of shows you that how childhood is is different in the Mesolithic. It's seen differently right and that it might not even be like society and ah social identity is all kind of wrapped on it.
00:27:30
Speaker
what's ah What's another way you could find children in the archaeological?
Children as Creators in Archaeology
00:27:34
Speaker
Well, I guess by, like, ways, I don't know, this is now me just going into my history with microanalysis and looking at traces of manufacture and things. And I remember that there were some beads that we looked at. And one of the hypotheses was that they had been made by children because they weren't quite as well finished and polished as the previous ones. so that and But I know that that is a massive discussion of the whole, like,
00:27:59
Speaker
skill in archaeology and everything. And it's sort of almost the easy option to say, oh, yeah, but kids must have made it then. But then it's like, well, yeah, that there's a lot of discussion about that, I know, in in especially prehistory, and sort of children as kind of makers or making things or or copying, I guess. So like learning in that respect.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's like a there' a great quote. I can't remember who said it, but I'll try and find it. I think it's in one of the, there'll be in the show notes, but there's a great quote that's basically like, if you give a like a prehistoric child a piece of pottery like to like to make, they'll do it. A four-year-old can do that. and No four-year-old can make a good lithic.
00:28:40
Speaker
ah Yeah. That's fair. They don't have the motor skills to make the lipstick, but they could try. Yeah, you're right. There is contention with it. there is definitely like But it could be that there's a sort of an apprenticeship or a learning about that. And what's really interesting is sometimes you find, especially on pottery, you find very tiny fingerprints, which I really love.
00:29:05
Speaker
So when they're being fired, you find their little fingerprints and you know that a child has at least touched it. So it could be that they've either made it or as it's firing, they've went and touched it. That was in my other podcast, Do You Break Time Trouble? Shameless plug. In the very first episode, actually, talking with Sarah Lord from Pod at History, we were talking about the Venus of Dolly Meston Yitzi, like the clay figurine. And that's got a fingerprint on its back and it's very small fingerprint. And one of the most popular theories is that it was given by a child to like do it. But she said that that was probably rubbish. But anyway. I just like the idea that they could be naughty and they're just like, I'm just going to hit a ring and I'm not allowed to touch. No, go away! Which, my goodness, if you've met my youngest, that's basically watching it so. That's very cute. But there's also this idea of like craft and play so we could do it at the same time and that you know how play is actually just part of a scaffolding of successful production. So you can see that a lot in prehistoric childhood, flint knapping because we've got chain au protoir, is that how you say it? There you go, you're better at French than I. So napping has that advantage of a pottery because you can really reconstruct the sequences. You can see all the different steps of the process and everything. And you can rebuild that. So there's a really good example of the Lizard Man village in Sinogua in the region of Arizona that has this. They have these tiny little lithics that they've built it up and they actually do think that one of the hypotheses is that it is actually children. making them. And so there's some cool stuff about that and how we view material culture as being created for and only for adults rather than children making them for themselves. There's something like that too. So we could really see children as producers in their own right, which would tie into the chosen one and how they could be an apprentice.
00:31:01
Speaker
and true so yeah and they'll probably because they're the chosen one they probably will have like weird wicked skill so yeah like we we need to look out for like a child living in sort of a place where located in a place where they're sort of lower down on the social scale and everything but create potentially creating things in a ridiculously and remarkably skillful way Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of like, well, they are obviously at different stages of their childhood, but that means that they have, you know, a different corporeal, mental, social development, but they're also involved likely in different tasks and spaces and social spheres, or not really just relating to adults, but, you know, to children, to each other's children and then back and forth as well. So if they're in that kind of space, then that will be the first place we should look.
00:31:51
Speaker
And that also relates to
Finding the Chosen One Archaeologically
00:31:53
Speaker
life ways. So, you know, how people move differently throughout the landscape. So if he's in a pr- oh they, I'm going to say they, because your mum's a They could move differently throughout the landscape and they could go to certain areas or interact with certain monuments because they're moving around because they have a job. but they have an apprenticeship or something like that. So you could look at stuff like that, even in the prehistory with him <unk> represented and pregnant women. They think that the Dorset Circus monument pregnant women would have interacted with differently because they usually walk around it a lot. And so, yeah. So.
00:32:27
Speaker
I think we've got a lot to go through. gee so Okay, so yeah so archaeologically, we're looking for this kid as an active member of the society, because even though they're a child, they are the chosen one. They're maybe be an apprentice or a maker, so we also just need to understand how they're perceived as a child in the kind of relevant fantastical society that they are a part of.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, about right, sounds about right, yeah. So if we use the techniques that we would use as archaeologists in our, you know, everyday life, everyday life, when I'm just like, looking for children at the archaeological record when we're looking for the these kids in burials every day. You know, when we're looking at open profession, we could use that easily to find the missing, he the chosen one and bring them back to the wizards. I'm really getting sick of those wizards.
00:33:14
Speaker
Ugh, me too. I think we should fire them. We should fire them. We should like forward them into the bin. Yes, exactly.
00:33:25
Speaker
Right, well that's about it for this episode of Am My Trial. We hope you enjoyed this weird quest, trying to find a chosen one. But if you have any suggestions for topics of future episodes, do get in contact via email or social media. All contact information as well as references and further reading for all the points that we've discussed today will be found in the show notes.
Show Promotions and Credits
00:33:45
Speaker
Don't forget to check out other shows as well on the Archaeology Podcasting Network. If you'd like to support us or our fellow podcast hosts on the network, you can always become a member. It's very good. So all the information can be found at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:34:00
Speaker
By the way, what's that you're wearing, Ash? This old thing is my latest magical amulet. Are you sure it's of course. Like, it doesn't burn. I mean, it it slightly burns. But like, what could possibly go wrong? OK, wait a bit. Let me just send a pigeon to a friend of mine who knows about these things. It's better to be safe than sorry.
00:34:28
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.