This thesis discusses the evidence for funerary practices afforded to children in the Earlier Bronze Age in Britain (circa 2500BC to 1400BC) focussing on three key case study areas: Scotland, Yorkshire and Wessex. A long-view of the Earlier Bronze Age has been adopted to enable broad patterns to be determined and discussed. The wider aim is to offer a fuller understanding of the perception and importance of children within Earlier Bronze Age society. Following the theoretical and methodological framework adopted throughout the study the evidence for the mortuary treatment of children and the grave furnishings provided for them is discussed with particular reference to how children’s graves compare to those of adults in the same chronological period. To accompany this study, a comprehensive catalogue of previously recorded children’s burials both by inhumation and after cremation has been compiled by the writer for the three case study areas. This includes data both from antiquarian sources and from modern excavation reports detailing aspects of grave location, positioning of the body and associated material culture in the form of grave goods. The corpus is then reviewed and discussed for each of the case study areas. The aim of each study is to analyse the significance of aspects of funerary practice and the role of grave goods in association with children of fifteen years of age or younger within regional burial traditions. This study indicates that children are under-represented in the burial record and suggests that formal burial was not open to all immature individuals. In each of the case study areas funerary rites afforded to children are generally consistent with those of adults but this study demonstrates that the inclusion of certain objects found in adult graves (such as bronze knife-daggers) were not considered appropriate for inclusion in the grave of a child. A number of exceptional and highly-furnished graves are present which indicate that it was possible for children to be perceived as significant members of Earlier Bronze Age society during life and in the Otherworld.

This thesis presents an investigation into children in medieval England through burial, the most archaeologically-visible evidence for the treatment and conceptualisation of children in life. It examines whether children were distinguished in burial from adults in parish cemeteries of the 10th-16th centuries. Selected cemeteries are analysed in detail to establish whether or not children received different burial treatment to adults. The burials of biologically-immature individuals are compared with the remainder of the burial population, totalling c.4,700 individuals, assessing whether the provision of burial furniture, burial in a shared grave and location of graves varied by age at death. The dissertation includes a discussion of archaeological and historical approaches to children and child burial, both general and medieval, medieval attitudes to children, death and burial, before discussing the case study sites in depth. From this, the methodological issues of undertaking such a study are considered and a sympathetic methodology developed, before the presentation of analysis, discussions and conclusions. I demonstrate that a variety of burial practices were used during the medieval period and that differentiation by age at death occurred. The results show that burials of juveniles are commonly differentiated, particularly infants aged 0-1 year or children aged 12 years or younger, by furniture, inclusion in a multiple burial and location. The thesis concludes that a variety of factors affected how an individual was buried, with age a strong determining factor for those dying at a young age. The influence of age is interpreted as resulting from medieval attitudes to infants, children and adolescents based on active, socially-identified characteristics, indicative of age-based appropriate burial treatment on both familial and community levels due to emotional, social, religious and economic concerns.