Brenna Hassett

Growing Up Human: the Anthropology and Archaeology of Childhood

The lecture will be on January 27 2023 at 7.00pm
in the Fenner Brockway Room, Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL.

Prehistoric baby bottles

Brenna is a Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology and is also a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. She is a biological anthropologist whose career has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. She specialises in using clues from the human skeleton to understand how people lived and died in the past. Her research focuses on the evidence of health and growth locked into teeth to investigate how children grew (or didn’t) across the world and across time. She has recently published Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood in 2022. Brenna is a founding member of the TrowelBlazers Project, dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the digging sciences.

Brenna has provided the following abstract of her lecture.

Tracking deep into our evolutionary history, anthropological science has begun to unravel one particular feature that sets us apart from the many, many animals that came before us – our uniquely long childhoods. The lecture looks at how we have diverged from our ancestral roots to stay ‘forever young’ – or at least what seems like forever – and how the evolution of childhood is a critical part of the human story.

Copies of Brenna’s book may be bought at a discounted price from her publisher by clicking here and quoting the promo code GUH20 at the checkout.

As is the case for all lectures, this one is free of charge for EMAS members, while non-members are asked to pay a fee of £3 in cash at the lecture.

We would be grateful if you could send an email to secretary@emasarchaeology.org to let us know that you are planning to attend. We hope to see you there.