Colm Donnelly

Location and assessment of an historic (150-160 years old) mass grave using geographic and ground penetrating radar investigation, NW Ireland.

Abstract:  Reburial of human remains and concerns regarding pathogens and pollution prompted the search for, and assessment of, a 156‐year‐old graveyard. To locate this graveyard, historic and anecdotal information was compared to landscape interpretation from aerial photography. To assess and map the contents, surface collapses, metal detector indications, and ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) were used. Some 170 anomalies compatible with burials were identified on 200 MHz GPR data, 84 of which coincided with surface collapses, suggesting both noncollapsed ground, subsequent infill, and multiple inhumations. The graveyard was possibly split into Roman Catholic plots with multiple inhumations; Protestant plots; and a kileen, or graveyard for the unbaptized (often children). The work serves as one approach to the location and mapping of recent and historic unmarked graves.

Post-Medieval and Industrial Archaeology in Ireland - An Overview

While the archaeological study of the early modern period was generally underplayed within Irish archaeology before the 1970s, since that time there has been a significant increase in research on post-medieval and industrial themes. The origins, achievements, and recent developments of post-medieval and industrial archaeology in Ireland are discussed, with a consideration of the future of these disciplines.

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

Abstract The nature of burial practices relating to children within formal ecclesiastical burial grounds in the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century has, to date, been largely ignored by archaeologists. Even a preliminary survey of such memorials, however, indicates that gravestones erected in the memory of children form a substantial component of the overall corpus of memorials within individual graveyards or cemeteries. A child from a wealthy background might be buried with an elaborately inscribed gravestone, while others were buried anonymously within their family plot, with only a brief reference to their short lives recorded on the memorial. In contrast, many un-named victims of epidemics or famine were buried in common pits, whilst unbaptised children denied burial in consecrated ground were laid to rest in the local childrens burial ground or cillín, without formal burial rites by the Roman Catholic church. This study examines the commemoration of children in four case study graveyards in the north of Ireland which date to between the later seventeenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. A survey of the number of memorials and the inscriptions they carry enables a more complete picture of the lives and deaths of the children they commemorate to become apparent.

Cillini: lugares para el enterramiento de individuos infantiles en Irlanda

Los cillini, o lugares para el enterramiento de ninos, son un tipo de monumento arqueologico que se encuentra a lo largo de toda Irlanda. Estos lugares se usaban frecuentemente para enterrar a ninos no bautizados, aunque otros miembros de la sociedad irlandesa que eran considerados por parte de la Iglesia Catolica Romana como inadecuados para ser enterrados en suelo consagrado, tambien fueron inhumados en estos lugares. Tal grupo incluia a los discapacitados, muertos en naufragios, criminales y victimas de las hambrunas. Las localizaciones de estos cillini son diversas e incluyen iglesias y cementerios abandonados, monumentos antiguos y lugares naturales conspicuos. Aunque desde la arqueologia se ha prestado considerable atencion a estos monumentos, aun son bastante desconocidos. Este texto revisara la investigacion previa sobre estos lugares antes de avanzar en una teoria que explique su origen. Tambien intentaremos explorar el impacto emocional que el entierro de un bebe en un cillin pudo tener sobre su familia y cuestionar investigaciones recientes que senalan a estos lugares como sitios liminares en el paisaje irlandes.