Digging in the Yard, it’s child’s play
Students digging for Harvard’s earliest roots in the Yard this summer have uncovered evidence of a group invisible in the public image of the male-dominated institution that Harvard was in the 1800s: children. Students participating in the biennial Archaeology of Harvard Yard Summer School course unearthed a fragment of a doll’s head, one of the first indications of the presence of children at what, in the 1800s, was an institution where male students were taught by male faculty. But class instructors Diana Loren, instructor in anthropology and associate curator in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Christina Hodge, senior curatorial assistant at the Peabody, said that women were an important part of the Harvard community, albeit in support roles — cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry — so it makes sense that children were here as well. With just a fragment to go on, though, the two said it’s impossible to know...