Adolescence is a critical period of the life course, encapsulating biological and social changes as individuals transition from childhood to adulthood. While the archaeology of childhood is a rapidly growing field, there has been little formal discussion on how adolescence may be biologically or socially defined and the spatial and temporal variability within these definitions. This book explores the meaning of adolescence through the analysis of material culture, historical documents, skeletal remains, isotope analysis, and other lines of evidence. Considering the implications for archaeologists and biological anthropologists, this book investigates the lived experiences of adolescents in the past to further our understanding of past societies.

Creighton Avery is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and an Osteoarcheologist with Stantec Consulting Ltd.  Recent publication includes a field guide Bioarcheology of Infants and Children for the series of Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques for the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and Cambridge University Press.

Dana Thacher is Researcher at McMaster University in Canada and Field Technician for Archaeological Research Associates. Her most recent work uses historical cemetery data combined with primary historical sources to explore why some children and adolescents received a gravestone following their death when others did not. She specializes in historical archaeology, statistical methods, and mortuary archaeology and has previously published in Arctic (2018) as well as the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2017).