This document summarizes Margaretha Vlahos' research on developing an archaeology of childhood experiences in Australia from 1788-1901. The research aims to understand what it meant to be a child during the Victorian era in Australia and how children's experiences are reflected in material culture. Vlahos uses the sociological theory of "interpretive reproduction" to analyze childhood-related artifacts. While adults controlled material goods for children, some Victorian era children exhibited agency, creativity, and choice in their lives. The study provides insights into urban and rural childhood experiences in the past and potential for future comparative research.

1. Developing an Archaeology of
Childhood Experiences in Australia from
1788-1901.
By: Margaretha Vlahos
University of Queensland
School of Social Science
Advisor: Dr Jon Prangnell

2. Research questions
Q. 1: What does it mean to be a child in
Victorian era Australia?
Q. 2: How are children’s experiences reflected
in the material culture?
Sub Q.: What are the differences between the degree of structure and
control in children’s daily lives? (differences in levels of agency).

3. What do we mean by
experiences?
• Two phenomenological principles that demonstrate the perception of
experience are consciousness and intentionality. Consciousness underpins our
basic understanding of an object as it brings together past intentions associated
with the object and the present relationship with it (Dahlberg et al. 2001).
• Experience gained prior to the mind giving it an interpreted meaning (Van
Manen:1990). Suggests unintentional and spontaneous experiences upon which
meaning is interpreted after the event.
• People participate in the world in ways that depend on previous experiences –
that dependency forms the response to new experiences.
• Thus a child engages in a purposeful action and at the same time, responds to
the action reacting to the experience.

4. Three assumptions in material
culture analysis
• the idea that objects contextualise and
mediate experiences
• objects provide structure and form to lived
experiences
• and objects form part of an experiential
exchange between humans and objects
(Wood 2009).

5. Four general principles of agency
• The material conditions of social life.
• The simultaneous constraining and enabling
influence of social, symbolic and material
structures and institutions, habitations and
beliefs.
• The importance of the
motivations/[intentions] and actions of
agents.
• The dialectic of structure and agency
(Dobres and Robb 2005:8).

6. What is interpretive reproduction?
• Focus is on childhood as a social construction resulting from the
collective actions of children with adults and each other.
• Recognises childhood as a structural form and children as social agents
who contribute to the reproduction of childhood and society through
their negotiations with adults and through their creative production of a
series of peer cultures with other children.
• Is a social phenomenon that replaces the traditional notion of
socialisation with the concept of interpretive reproduction.
• Reflects children’s evolving membership in their culture, which begins
in the family and spirals outward as children create a series of
embedded peer cultures based on the institutional structure of the adult
culture.
• Challenges sociology to take children seriously and to appreciate
children’s contributions to social reproduction and change.

7. Breaking down the terms
 The term ‘interpretive’ captures innovative and creative aspects
of children’s participation in society. Children produce and participate
in their own unique peer cultures by creatively appropriating
information from the adult world to address their own peer concerns.
• The term ‘reproduction’ captures the idea that children do not
simply internalise society and culture, but also actively contribute to
cultural production and change. The term also implies that children
are, by their very participation in society, constrained by the existing
social structure and by social reproduction.

8. Discovering children’s
experiences in material culture.
John, Catherine and Emily Gilbert at ‘Pewsey Vale’ (State Library of South Australia, The
Gilbert Family Collection, PRG266/43).

9. The sites and collections
Terrestrial sites/collections
(urban)
Terrestrial sites/collections
(rural)
Maritime sites
Casselden Place (Vic)
Cohen Place (Vic)
Cumberland Gloucester St (NSW)
Devonshire Arms Hotel (Vic)
Lilyvale (NSW)
Rockpool (NSW)
Royal College of Surgeons (Vic)
Saltwater Crossing (Vic)
Corinella (Vic)
Gilbert Family Collection (SA)
Lucy Family Collection (SA)
Melbourne Museum Collection
(Vic)
Peel Town (WA)
Short’s National Hotel (Vic)
Unitarian Collection (SA)
Viewbank (Vic)
Fiji Shipwreck (Vic)
Loch Ard Shipwreck
(Vic)

10. What was reflected?
• Agency
• Creativity and innovation
• Self-discipline and motivation
• Play and recreation
• Education
• Religion and moral instruction
• Self expression
• Work (including overlap of work
and play
• Supervision, naughtiness and
punishment
• What drove/inspired the children
• Free will and choices
• Emotions and concerns
• Thoughts, feelings and sentiments

16. A variety of moralising china fragments from Casselden Place(Godden
Mackay Logan in Crook et al. 2006)
A lathe turned spinning top (Godden Mackay Logan in Crook et
al. 2006)
Assorted wooden chess pieces (Godden Mackay Logan in Crook
et al. 2006)

28. The Gilbert family at ‘Pewsey Vale’ (State Library of South Australia, The Gilbert Family Collection, PRG266/29/1).

34. Conclusion
• The research is unique in its theoretical and methodological approach with
the use of the sociological theory of interpretive reproduction in an
archaeological study of children in the past.
• The application of interpretive reproduction theory in the analysis of
childhood related material culture, has made agency and the creativity of the
children themselves more visible.
• Whilst adults controlled the sourcing, purchase and selection of material
culture they deemed appropriate for children, according to their ideals, hopes
and aspirations, some Victorian era children had a considerable degree of
agency, creativity and choice.
• The study adds to the body of research of children and childhood in the past
both in Australia and internationally.
• There is potential for future research with a comparative study of childhood
experiences from urban and rural contexts.

35. References
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2000 An Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender and Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, University of Michigan.
Benthall, J.
1992 Child Focused Research. Anthropology Today 8(2):23-5.
Corsaro, W. A., and L. Fingerson.
2003 Development and Socialisation in Childhood. In J. Delamater (ed.) Handbook of Social Psychology, pp. 125-55. New York: Kluwer
Academic /Plenum Publishers.
James, A. and A. Prout (eds.)
1990 Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. New Haven: Farmer.
Panter-Brick, C. (ed.)
1998 Biosocial Perspectives on Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paris, L.
2008 Through the Looking Glass: Age, Stages and Historical Analysis. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1(1):106.
Saxton, M.
2008 Introduction. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1(1):1-3.
Sofaer Derevenski, J.
1994 Where are the Children? Accessing Children in the Past. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 13(2):1-6.
1997 Engendering Children, Engendering Archaeology. In J. Moore and Scott, E. (eds.) Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and
Childhood into European Archaeology, pp. 192-202. London: Leicester University Press.
2000 Material Culture Shock: Confronting Expectations in the Material Culture of Children. In J. Sofaer Derevenski (ed.) Children and Material
Culture, pp. 3-16. London: Routledge.
Image credits:
Godden Mackay Logan.
2004 Images in Crook et al. 2006, Exploring the archaeology of the modern city project databases, archaeology and people and place.
The Archaeology of the Modern City Series (13) Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
State Library of South Australia, The Gilbert Family Collection, images PRG266/29/1, PRG266/43.