Browse Primary Sources

Locate primary sources, including images, objects, media, and texts. Annotations by scholars contextualize sources.

Italian Mother and Baby photograph thumbnail image

Italian Mother and Baby

"Italian Mother and Baby" appeared in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). This image captures the misery of urban poverty as well as the tenacity of life. It is infused with unmistakable sentimentalism and symbolism.

Girls Making Snowman painting thumbnail

Girls Making Snowman

Motivated by wartime hysteria and racial sentiments following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that ordered the removal of Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps in the interior.

Last Day of School, Calgary image thumbnail

Last Day of School, Calgary

The children of various ages shown bursting through the doorway of the stone school building in Calgary, Alberta, have just been released for their summer vacation.

Piegan Play Tipi image thumbnail

Piegan Play Tipi

The photograph, dated 1928, from the well-known ethnographic collection The North American Indian by Edward Edward S. Curtis, is a portrait of a young Piegan girl standing in front of a painted tipi, or conical tent. The label on the photograph by Curtis indicates that it is a play tipi, meaning a child-sized version of the tents used for families among this Native American group.

Child's Sock image thumbnail

Child's Sock

Archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie found this child's sock, dated to the 2nd century C.E., in a cemetery at Oxyrhyncus, a Greek monastic centre on the banks of the Nile in Egypt. The sock is made of wool yarn in a technique called "sprang," or loop knitting, in which short pieces of yarn were looped in a circular pattern using a needle.

Infant's Tunics thumbnail image

Infant's Tunics

These two infant tunics, found south of Cairo by archaeologists, date to the period after the Arab conquest of Egypt. The first tunic, measuring 45 centimeters long and 47 cm wide (17.7 x 18.5 inches), was made of a single length of hand-woven brown wool folded in half at the shoulders and sewn on the sides, leaving openings for the arms and vents at the hand-stitched hem for mobility.

Children's Tunics thumbnail image

Children's Tunics

These two children's tunics, found in Egypt by archaeologist Wm. Flinders Petrie, date to the Islamic period, 9th or 10th century. The blue tunic measures 45.5 cm long and 51 cm wide (18 x 20 inches). The tunic is made of three different fabrics cut from an adult garment into 11 separate pieces, with sleeves and side gores.

Thumbnail image of Mud Crocodile Toy

Mud Crocodile Toy

This small sculpture of a crocodile is made of Nile River mud, and was probably a toy fashioned by a child at play. The crocodile was a familiar monster to children living along the Nile—an object of fear and fascination. This 5 centimeter (2 inch) long mud figurine has open jaws, slits for eyes, a curved tail that seems to whip it through the water, and feet that seem to be in motion.

Phoenician Baby Bottle thumbnail image

Phoenician Baby Bottle

The Phoenician terracotta vessel features a human face, the nose forming a narrow spout. The bottle is an archaeological find from Carthage, near modern Tunis, dated to 399 BCE-200 BCE. Archaeologists believe this object was a baby bottle. It could have been used to feed diluted wine with honey or other sweet liquid such as juice, milk, or thin porridge, cooked cereal made from ground grain.

Two Daughters of Akhenaten thumbnail image

Two Daughters of Akhenaten

The bas-relief, or carved panel, in limestone shows two sisters embracing. They are princesses from the family of Akhenaten, the 18th pharaonic dynasty in ancient Egypt, dated to 1349–1336 BCE. This artistic style belongs to the Amarna period, which is unusual because of the affection and intimate portrayal of the sisters.

Illustration from The Maqamat of al-Hariri thumbnail image

Illustration from The Maqamat of al-Hariri

During the Abassid period and onward, children four or older in villages and urban centers began attending schools (maktabs) attached to mosques to obtain a basic education in religious matters. Students in a maktab sat in a semicircle on the floor around the teacher writing their lessons on a tablet and then repeating it back for correction.

Miniature illustration of the Devishirme thumbnail image

Devshirme System

This Ottoman miniature painting from 1558 shows a group of boys dressed in red, being registered for the devshirme (usually translated as “child levy” or “blood tax”).

Thumbnail image of Disciplining Children in the Codex Mendoza

Disciplining Children in the Codex Mendoza

Aztec children were valued creations. Language used in rituals compared infants to precious stones and feathers, flakes of stone, ornaments, or sprouts of plants. The duty of parents and society, however was not to indulge but to socialize the child, so that they would not become "fruitless trees," as an Aztec proverb stated.

Thumbnail image of Immigrant Crossing Road Sign

Immigrant Crossing Road Sign

Interstate 5 runs from the Mexican/U.S. border crossing at San Ysidro, California, to the Peace Arch Crossing into Canada at Blaine, Washington. This official yellow warning road sign is posted along Interstate 5 near the San Ysidro crossing and north of San Diego. The sign shows a man and a woman running as the woman pulls a girl with pigtails along, her feet barely touching the ground.

Thumbnail image of Postcard of Women and Girls with Cradleboard in Chile

Postcard of Women and Girls with Cradleboard, Temuco, Chile

This postcard, from the early 20th century, shows a group of women and children, most likely belonging to the Mapuche people. The Mapuche occupied a large area in the cone of South America, the territory of the current nations of Chile and Argentina.

Birth Rituals in the Codex Mendoza thumbnail image

Birth Rituals in the Codex Mendoza

The image from the Codex Mendoza (produced ca. 1535-1550) describes the Aztec birth ritual of bathing and naming the child, which, according to accounts from the 16th century, was usually held on the fourth day after birth. It was attended by the parents and kin, who gathered in the house before sunrise to feast and observe the ceremony.

Thumbnail image of Aztec Cradleboard Figurine and Drawing

Aztec Cradleboard Figurine and Drawing

The ceramic figurine of an infant in a cradle (also called a cradleboard) was created by the Nahua, or Aztec people of Mexico, between 1350 and 1521 CE. It shows how infants were kept bound in a cradle or carried on a cradleboard, a practice that was common among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The figurine also shows how the baby would have been bound or swaddled in the cradle.

Thumbnail image of illustration of measles

Rubeola Vulgaris - Measles

Robert Willan (1757-1812) was a physician who practiced in London. Like Sydenham he was fascinated by the relation of weather to epidemics and kept strict records on when they occurred over several years. He was particularly interested in the diseases of children and carefully observed rashes and pustules as they developed in stages on the skin.

Engraving of transplanting teeth thumbnail image

Transplanting Teeth

This print is by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) and is dated 1787. It is a satirical comment upon the real practice of rich gentlemen and ladies of the 18th century paying for teeth to be pulled from poor children and transplanted in their gums. The dentist present is portrayed as a quack. There are even two quacking ducks on the placard advertising his fake credentials.

Age of Menarche in Norway chart thumbnail image

Age of Menarche in Norway

This graph shows us the average year of menarche, a female's first menstrual cycle (often considered the beginning of puberty), from 1860 to 1980 reported by adult female patients at maternity clinics in Norway. It also includes data from Oslo school girls that follow the same trend downward in age. The downward curve flattens around 1960 between the ages of 13 and 14.