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The Roman family has become a vibrant and challenging field of study, and the growing interest in children in Roman culture can be seen as a development within this trend. Nevertheless, studies of children tend to focus on the later phases of childhood, with few investigations of the role and significance of infants. While the Roman life-course and the social construction of ageing are occasional themes in childhood, discussions the distinct life stages of development and socialization apparent already in the first year of life hardly feature in current discourses. In view of this imbalance in childhood studies, this chapter explores some key aspects of Roman infancy and earliest childhood, using archaeological, epigraphic, and historical evidence to gain insight into the attitudes towards the very young, and particularly those under the age of one year, in both life and death, and, sometimes, even before birth.

Evidence suggests that the cost of wrapping and decorating a mummy was an expensive enterprise, and considering the wide range of people involved and the materials required, one would expect transactions concerning such costly items to have generated some paperwork. However, textual evidence for the production of mummies, burial assemblages, or tombs in Roman Egypt is almost non-existent, so much so that funerary art could almost be defined as art without artists, created by invisible hands. This article collects the available evidence and attempts to understand better the working life of the funerary artists and craftsmen of Roman Egypt.

This chapter describes the primary ethnohistoric sources available for studying Mexica culture: codices and chronicles. The codices include both prehispanic and Colonial records that present information through logosyllabic writing and indigenous iconography that were often subsequently discussed in alphabetic writing. The chronicles were written by the conquerors, religious practitioners, political leaders, European-educated indigenous writers, and others. The chapter also examines sixteenth-century European-style illustrated books, such as the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias, as well as Nahuatl lexicons. In conjunction with archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic studies, the data contained in these sources allows analysis of all elements of Aztec culture, including history, economy, religion, daily life, and government.

This chapter has two parts. The first describes the origins, types, and uses of alphabetic and semi-syllabic writing systems in Iron Age Europe from the eighth century BC to c.AD 1000, and their spread through three main networks of long-range contact and exchange. It illustrates the typical progression from short labels naming craftsmen, owners, and the dead, to practical records of contracts and law codes, then canonical versions of elite oral tradition, and the ultimate generalized literacy of the urban civilizations. Inscribed coinage provides well-dated evidence in many otherwise non-literate places. The second part reviews first-hand accounts by travellers, historians, and geographers, from Hecataeus (c.550–476 BC) to Ahmad Ibn Fadlan and Adam of Bremen (tenth to eleventh centuries AD), tracking incremental changes over time in the range of what was known, and in motives for writing about foreign peoples.