Christian Laes is an associate professor of ancient history and Latin at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and an adjunct professor in ancient history at the history department of the University of Tampere, Finland. He has studied the social and cultural history of Rome and Late Antiquity, paying particular attention to the human life course: childhood; youth; family; slavery; old age; sexuality; and disabilities. His monographs, and over 70 contributions have been published by international publishers and journals.

Ville Vuolanto is research fellow at IFIKK, University of Oslo, Norway, and adjunct professor in general history at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has published a number of articles on the history of the family and childhood in the Roman and early medieval periods, and is now writing a monograph on children in Oxyrhynchos (with April Pudsey). His latest book Children and Asceticism in Late Antiquity: Continuity, Family Dynamics and the Rise of Christianity was published in 2015.

List of Figures

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Notes on Contributors

1. A New Paradigm for the Social History of Childhood and Children in Antiquity

Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto

2. Agency, Experience, and the Children in the Past. The Case of Roman Childhood

Ville Vuolanto

Setting the Scene: Experiences and Environments

3. Children and the Urban Environment: Agency in Pompeii

Ray Laurence

4. Little Tunics for Little People: the Problems of Visualising the Wardrobe of the Roman child

Mary Harlow

5. Touching Children in Roman Antiquity: the Sentimental Discourse and the Family Christian Laes

6. Being a Niece or Nephew in an Ancient City. Children's Social Environment in Roman Oxyrhynchos

April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto

What Did the Roman Children Actually Do?

7. Leisure as a Site of Child Socialisation. Agency and Resistance in the Roman Empire

Jerry Toner

8. Roman Girls and Boys at Play: Realities and Representations

Fanny Dolansky

9. Age, Agency, and Material Culture in the Roman World: the Graffiti Evidence from Roman Campania

Katherine Huntley

10. Why Roman Pupils Lacked a Long Vacation

Konrad Vössing

11. Becoming a Roman Student

W. Martin Bloomer

Religious Practices and Sacred Spaces

12. Roman Children as Religious Agents: The Cognitive Foundations of Cult

Jakob Mackey

13. Jewish Childhood in the Roman Galilee. Sabbath in Tiberias (c. 300 CE)

Hagith Sivan

14. Resistance and Agency in the Everyday Life of Late Antique Children (3rd-8th c CE) Béatrice Caseau

15. Children in Monastic Families in Egypt at the End of Antiquity