I Am Not Dead, but Do Sleep Here: The Representation of Children in Early Modern Burial Grounds in the North of Ireland

The role of infant life histories in the construction of identities in death: An incremental isotope study of dietary and physiological status among children afforded differential burial

“…However, a combination of poor preservation of immature remains and child‐specific funerary practices that render their remains archaeologically invisible has led to limited investigation of variation in child burials. Children's graves may be located in different cemeteries to those of adults (Lillehammer, ; McKerr, Murphy, & Donnelly, ) or in clusters within cemeteries (Bedford, Buckley, Valentin, Tayles, & Longga, ; Sayer, ). Their remains may also be placed in forms of burial container exclusive to their age group (Carroll, ; Halcrow, Tayles, & Livingstone, ) or accompanied by different grave goods to adults including esoteric items such as amulets and curated objects (Carroll, ; Kay, ) or items which might be interpreted as toys or playthings (Andrushko, Buzon, Gibaja Oviedo, & Creaser, ; Harlow, ; Martin‐Kilcher, ).…”

Children’s Burial Grounds in Ireland (Cilliní) and Parental Emotions Toward Infant Death

“…It also needs to be born in mind that the majority of post-medieval individuals in Ireland buried within consecrated ground would not have been able to afford an elaborate and inscribed headstone (see e.g., McKerr et al 2009). One of the predominant funerary markers of this time for the poorer members of society was a simple metal or wooden cross (Mytum 2004, p. 67), which would have afforded the individuals interred beneath with a similar degree of anonymity to those people buried within a cillín (Fig.…”

‘Childness’: An Alternative Approach to the Archaeology of Childhood through Cemetery Studies

“…Internationally, McKerr et al (2009) investigated the visibility of children in early modern burial grounds and the contrast between private grief and the increasingly public nature of the memorialization of death throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They found that children's burials became more visible in the cemetery landscape in the seventeenth century, reflecting their greater presence in public spaces generally, as the family's affection and grief for the child was increasingly seen as "a loss that was deemed worthy of public record and attention" (McKerr et al 2009, pp.…”

“…We wish to make it clear that we do not intend childness to speak to the presumed 'value' of children, even if we do potentially connect it to measures of social variability and capitalist concepts of value as understood through labor. We assume, based on previous research, that children have always been highly valued and loved, contra both Ariès (1962) and Stone (1977) now outdated arguments (see, for example, Baxter 2013Baxter , 2015Haveman 1999;McKerr et al 2009). Regardless, a childhood in life might have been conceptualized as beginning and ending at different points in different settings for different groups as a result of wider social processes linked to the fundamental changes wrought by capitalism and the closely intertwined ideologies of class, status, and gender.…”