Viking Teaching Pack
Online Biannual Lectures
On the 18th May 2021 The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past hosted its first online biannual lecture. Our first guest speaker was Creighton Avery (McMaster University) with their talk ‘Gendered Childhood Diets: An Analysis of Dietary Stable Isotopes in Tooth Dentine in Roman Gaul‘
Abstract – Childhood is a biological and social phenomenon. However, investigations of social age in biological anthropology are limited by currently available methodologies, including the lack of reliable methods to estimate sex in pre-pubertal skeletal remains. By looking at childhood dietary signals in adult remains we may have a way to circumvent these issues, while also uncovering dietary signals for those that survived the period of childhood.
This research uses incremental analysis of dietary stable isotopes in tooth dentine to investigate childhood and adolescent diet at Lisieux-Michelet, a Roman Imperial city in Northern France (4-5th centuries CE). In particular, we explore gendered dietary differences across the period of childhood and adolescence and work understand these dietary patterns in the context of expected social age changes in the Roman Imperial life course.
Biography – Creighton Avery is a PhD Candidate at McMaster University’s Department of Anthropology. In her doctoral research, she explores coming of age in the Roman Empire. Specifically, she works to understand when children became adults in the Roman Empire, both physically (by assessing puberty) and socially (by assessing diet), and how these experiences differed depending on gender, status and location within the Empire.
To follow updates on Creighton’s research, please see –
Web page: www.CreightonAvery.com
Twitter: @LCreightonAvery