A new look into prehistoric motherhood

• Author: Publications Office
• Pages: 23-24

© Bundesdenkmalamt Austria

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A new look into

prehistoric motherhood

What was motherhood like during the Bronze and Iron Ages? e VAMOS project

aims to nd out with innovative archaeological analysis methods. In doing so, it

manages to challenge misconceptions about ‘natural’ childbearing.

There are many things about motherhood that we have come

to consider as set in stone since the dawn of time. But the truth

is, these are just assumptions. As a mother of two young boys,

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, an archaeologist specialised in the

European Bronze and Iron Ages working at the Austrian Academy

of Sciences in Vienna, knows it all too well.

“There is a considerable amount of political debate in Europe

on how to best support working mothers in their careers while

providing optimal substitute care for babies and small children.

In such debates, naïve narratives of ‘prehistoric’ and ‘natural’

childrearing are frequently misused as political arguments. You’ll

hear either that mothers should never be separated from their

babies, or that child-rearing used to be communal,” she explains.

Whilst the three millennia preceding the rise of Rome are

generally considered as one of the foundations upon which our

societies are built, the truth is that we don’t know much about

what it meant to be a mother back then.

Was social status already impacting the number of surviving

children? When did women first become mothers and how many

Burial of a 12-14 year-old girl from Franzhausen

CORDIS Results Pack on gender frontier research

Advancing innovative ideas and perspectives on gender

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