Studies of cultural transmission—whether approached by archaeological or ethnographic means—have made great strides in identifying formal teaching and learning arrangements, which in turn can be closely aligned with models of social learning. While novices and apprentices are often in focus in such studies, younger children and their engagement with material culture have received less attention. Against the backdrop of a cross-cultural database of ethnographically documented object use and play in 54 globally distributed foraging communities, we here discuss the ways in which children make and use tools and toys. We provide a cross-cultural inventory of objects made for and by hunter–gatherer children and adolescents. We find that child and adolescent objects are linked to adult material culture, albeit not exclusively so. Toys and tools were primarily handled outside of explicit pedagogical contexts, and there is little evidence for formalised apprenticeships. Our data suggests that children’s self-directed interactions with objects, especially during play, has a critical role in early-age enskillment. Placed within a niche construction framework, we combine ethnographic perspectives on object play with archaeological evidence for play objects to offer an improved cross-cultural frame of reference for how social learning varies across early human life history and what role material culture may play in this process. While our analysis improves the systematic understanding of the role and relevance of play objects among hunter–gatherer societies, we also make the case for more detailed studies of play objects in the context of ethnographic, archival and archaeological cultural transmission research.

文化传播研究——无论是通过考古学还是人种学方法——在确定正式的教学和学习安排方面取得了长足的进步，这反过来又可以与社会学习模型紧密结合。虽然新手和学徒通常是此类研究的重点，但年幼的儿童及其对物质文化的参与却很少受到关注。在 54 个全球分布的觅食社区中以人种学方式记录的对象使用和玩耍的跨文化数据库的背景下，我们在此讨论儿童制作和使用工具和玩具的方式。我们提供了一份跨文化清单，列出了为狩猎采集者儿童和青少年制作的物品以及由他们制作的物品。我们发现儿童和青少年物品与成人物质文化相关，尽管并非完全如此。玩具和工具主要是在明确的教学环境之外处理的，而且几乎没有证据表明有正式的学徒制。我们的数据表明，儿童与物体的自主互动，尤其是在游戏过程中，在早期技能培养中起着关键作用。在利基构建框架内，我们将对象游戏的民族志观点与游戏对象的考古证据相结合，为社会学习在早期人类生活史中的变化以及物质文化在这一过程中可能扮演的角色提供了一个改进的跨文化参考框架. 虽然我们的分析提高了对狩猎采集社会中游戏对象的作用和相关性的系统理解，但我们也为在民族志背景下对游戏对象进行更详细的研究提供了理由，