Memorials

Studies of memorials for the dead reflect a wide range of interpretations. The Taj Majal, the pyramids of Giza, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the graveyards of Puritan New England, to name but a few, have been approached from architectural, archaeological, aesthetic, and genealogical perspectives. They have also been considered in relation to ideas about status, identity, ethnicity, and social history. However, with these diverse approaches there has often been the embedded assumption that grave markers signify individual interment sites that permanently record the identity of the deceased. In contrast, more recent studies have demonstrated that interment, place, and permanence are not universal, all-pervasive social practices. Rather than frozen in time, cemeteries and memorials have been shown to represent dynamic collections of artifacts subject to the same practical, interpretive, and historical processes as any other cultural text. Furthermore, interment in cemeteries, the marking of individual graves, and the permanent sanctity of grave locations represent just one form of mortuary practice. Thus, recent approaches to the nature of grave markers, cemeteries, and memorials provide us with a more complicated historical and sociocultural perspective by which to understand the relationship between the living and the dead as expressed through material culture.

In many Western countries, the rarity of grave markers prior to 1800 has been commonly attributed to factors of haphazard preservation. However, some studies now suggest that the use of permanent individual gravestones was an occasional practice that became a social norm only after 1800. Prior to that time, individuals whose families sought to maintain continuity and a kindred connection with their ancestors were those most likely to have erected permanent grave markers. Particularly in Europe, interment occurred in a variety of locations, including family courtyards, rural property, and the floors of homes and churches. Final disposition of remains also took place in common graves, such as charnel structures or open garrets. Specifically in Greece, evidence for the practice of secondary burial goes back to the time of Alexander the Great. While European [Page 718]cemeteries did appear as early as the 12th century, and were often associated with churches or other ecclesiastical structures, it is now understood that a wide variety of local and ethnically based community burial traditions were also practiced.

Graves, Markers, and Cemeteries

The meanings and messages conveyed by grave markers cannot be fully understood without recognition of the communities, histories, and sociocultural contexts in which the deceased lived and died. Gravestone studies, then, highlight a central paradox—death as a fundamental human experience is juxtaposed with death as a contextualized, situated experience. Both the dead and their associated gravestones are inextricably linked to the social circumstances and historical times that create, give boundary to, reify, and express meanings, metaphors, and symbols. As a result, a stroll through a local cemetery is likely to be both a familiar and an alien experience. For late-20thand early-21stcentury Americans, memorial parks filled with bronze markers flush to the ground appear familiar. Likewise, cemetery landscapes constituting slab-shaped gray granite tombstones, sparsely decorated and identifying the deceased by name, are likely to evoke a sense of familiarity. Nevertheless, cemeteries may also contain imposing white marble tablets, elaborate epitaphs that recall vivid imagery, full life-sized statues honoring and lending prominence to the deceased who lies beneath, symbols, metaphoric references, and even styles of lettering that we may be unable to recognize. Because shifts in time and perspective alter our view of these grave forms, their verbal, visual, architectural, and material messages may not be readily evident. Graves and cemeteries are part of the constantly changing social panoply, and death is simultaneously a universal constant and a specifically contextualized experience.

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