Discovering Childhood: Using Fingerprints to Find Children in the Archaeological Record

Abstract

Experimental replications show that ridge breadth measurements from fingerprints on archaeological artifacts can be used to estimate the age of the individual who produced the prints. While the greatest amount of variability in human ridge breadth is due to the growth during development from birth to adulthood, there is also variability due to hand and body size, sex, and ethnicity. Despite these confounding variables, the variability due to age is great enough to allow the separation of children’s prints from those of adults using ridge breadths. The utility of this measurement is illustrated with a short case study using ceramic vessels and figurines from northern Arizona. This discovery has great potential for illuminating some of the roles that children played in prehistory.