Cemeteries

It was Elias Leavenworth who, in 1859, identified the cemetery as “the last great necessity” for his community, and for most of history it has been seen as such. However, globalization and the growth of new immigrant and ethnic communities from cultures and religions with divergent views about death and the dead are similarly manifested in divergent burial practices.

The word cemetery is derived from the Greek word for sleeping chamber, as the ancient Greeks believed that the dead were temporarily resting, awaiting the Day of Judgment when chambers would be emptied. Cemeteries are differentiated from other types of burial sites, such as graveyards [Page 169]or churchyards, pauper's fields, mass graves, pantheons, or burial grounds. Modern-day cemeteries and memorial gardens are large parks for the interment of the dead and, unlike graveyards, are not attached to churches. They often represent a place for ritualized burial needs for a distinct community or culture of peoples. Their internal layout is ordered so that entire families can claim and control grave spaces. They tend to be secular, municipal entities serving a geographic region, community, ethnic group, or religious group. In the United States, due primarily to health concerns in the 17th century, cemeteries were located on the outskirts of towns. Today, space limitations force cemeteries outside of heavily populated urban areas.

Historically, cemeteries were central to community life and to the continuity of families, functioning to provide a physical place where people could visit, remember, and pay their respects to the dead. The significance of the cemetery in today's mobile and diverse societies is more complex, and it is not unusual for families to bury their dead and never return to that burial place. Alternatives to burial, primarily cremation, changing attitudes about death, and changes in the cultural symbolism of cemeteries all suggest evolving cosmological belief systems such as John Stephenson identified in his ages of sacred, secular, and avoided death.

American Cemeteries and Christian Traditions

In the United States the evolution of cemetery practices and the shifting meaning of death can be traced to the early colonial period, when cemeteries took the form of church or town graveyards and iconography encompassed an age of sacred death. Prior to the mid-1600s there is no indication that the New England Puritans marked the graves of their deceased, but by the 1660s the practice of grave marking was widespread. James Deetz documents that stonecutters used three basic designs: death's heads, winged cherubs, and a willow tree overhanging a pedestaled urn. Death's heads were most common from the 1680s to the mid-1700s. In the same genre were carvings that emphasized the flight of time: the hour glass, a scythe in the hand of death or father time, skeletons, crossbones, and death darts. Death heads tended to become less severe during the early 18th century, metamorphosing into a pleasant cherub or angelic image. Some carvings began to use background designs of foliage, grapes, or hearts that softened the presentation of death. Verses of consolation and lines of poetry conveying a message of hope also began to appear. Increasingly, death was portrayed as benign sleep. The new gravestone art symbolized optimism, depersonalization of death, and a new interest and appreciation for nature. The optimism reflected changing religious beliefs from the Puritan doctrine of predestination to the notion that in Jesus Christ, individuals could find salvation that would ensure life after death. The willow tree and urn motif also marked the end of town graveyards of the colonial period and the rise of the modern cemetery.

...