Paige’s Publications
Please click through the tabs to view abstracts of my publications, with the most recent on the left and the oldest to the right. Each tab also contains a link to the PDF version of the entire article.
Magrogan, Paige. 2019. “Children’s Burial Grounds in Ireland: An Attempt to Forget, or to Remember?” ABD: Artifacts, Bones, Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Student Journal. Vol. 6: 15-25.
Article Abstract:
This article focuses on the use of children’s burial grounds, or cilliní, in Ireland and how the practice might reflect ideas about women, parenting, loss, and grief in modern Ireland. Cilliní were used from the post-Medieval period until about the 1960s as resting places for unbaptized infants and are located on non-consecrated ground. Most cilliní are located at sites that were formerly considered consecrated ground, that formerly had ritual or political signifcance, or that have liminal qualities, and they generally mark the reuse of a site after it has fallen into disuse. Most scholars fall into two camps when interpreting these sites. One emphasizes the influence of Catholic doctrine on baptism and claims that unbaptized infants were considered the Other, and that placing them in a cillín was an attempt to forget or conceal them. The other camp emphasizes the emotions parents often feel when losing a child and asserts that parents often preferred cilliní because they felt that this practice would prevent their children from feeling lonely. The author’s interpretation, based on an evaluation of the existing literature and placing it in conversation with relevant anthropological and historical literature, incorporates the two camps. The first camp’s interpretation may correspond to the public aspect of cillín use, while the second may correspond to the private aspect. This article explores and encourages us to interrogate ideas about the place of children in Irish society, motherhood, personhood, and the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss and infant death.
Magrogan, Paige 2017. “Questions of Identity and Cultural Contributions in the Archaeology of Maroon Settlements.” Fields/Terrains: McGill Undergraduate Journal of Anthropology. Vol. 7: 74-83.
This article serves as a survey of a number of current issues in the archaeological study of maroon settlements, including the difficulties in defining and categorizing slavery and marronage; the range of sites occupied by maroons and their typical characteristics; the cooperation of indigenous people as a factor in maroon survival; the ways in which maroons resisted; and cross-cultural differences in how fugitive enslaved people negotiated their identities.