The Place of time in children’s being

This chapter approaches children’s spatialities from a temporal perspective. It explores how children experience, understand and create histories in relation to the places they inhabit. Following archaeologist Chris Tilley who has argued that, ‘places gather together persons, memories, structures, histories, myths and symbols’ (Tilley, 2004, p. 25), I will discuss ideas of children’s spatiality in relation to the temporality of place, the development of children’s understanding of such, and the role of family, friends and teachers in shaping their encounters and interpretations. Drawing from two examples of children’s experiences of being in historical places, I will show how children develop an embodied knowledge of the temporality of places. The first example considers the experiences of children in the formal context of a small rural primary school with a community archaeologist, in which children’s participation in an archaeological excavation created a particular way of understanding the relationship between places and their history. The second example explores the experiences of children visiting stone circles while participating in everyday family activities such as visiting heritage sites at weekends or on holiday, going for walks, exercising dogs, cycling and picnicking.