Tombstones

A tombstone is a marker for a grave. Historically many graves have gone unmarked, but where tombstones are used, across cultures these markers are made of different materials. There are graves marked by fieldstone that are either placed upright or horizontally on the surface of the earth. Fieldstone can be any type of rock, but it is generally made of local material, such as sandstone. Usually nothing is inscribed on the stone, which serves solely to inform the living that someone is buried below. One example is historic African American slave cemeteries located in the southern portion of the United States that are replete with irregularly shaped fieldstones.

More elaborate tombstones are made of materials such as granite, marble, slate, limestone, iron, and bronze and are often carved with descriptive notations, inscriptions, and are sometimes ornately decorated. Tombstone grave markers are also perishable. Wooden crosses weather and deteriorate over time. Some wooden crosses are plainly carved, while other crosses are carved into hearts or even stylized people. This essay offers a brief history of tombstones and provides a discussion of the functions, uses, and culture of tombstones.

History of Tombstones

Prehistoric groups throughout time marked their graves with a stone or a horizontally placed slab of stone. Neanderthals may have been the first species to mark their graves. At the rock shelter site located at La Ferrassie in France, which dates to 70,000 years ago, paleoanthropologists have found eight buried Neanderthal skeletons. One of these individuals was buried under a triangular stone, thus representing what some analysts believe to be one of the earliest tombstones.

Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Persians at times marked an individual's grave with a stone. In Greek society, for example, the only individuals awarded a tombstone were those Spartan warriors who died in battle and mothers who died in childbirth. But generally tombstones were not considered essential until 1804, when on June 12 of that year, France created the Decree of Prairial, Year XII. This decree established that burials were not to be in churchyards and towns but in cemeteries outside the city, and that common graves would be replaced by juxtaposed graves. Individuals could buy a grave plot for perpetuity. The Decree of Prairial also stated that a tombstone or other burial mark could be placed over the burial site of a loved one. In one cemetery, called Père-Lachaise, 114 tombstones were placed in 1804 and over the period of 1814 through 1830, an average of 1,879 tombstones were placed each year. This decree propelled people to claim a grant of land, big or small, and designate that plot as theirs by a tombstone or monument. To the present time, the tombstone has been integral to a gravesite.

The Social Science and Historical Use of Tombstones

Scholars use historic and modern cemeteries as laboratories for collecting and analyzing data. With a tombstone library of millions, anthropologists and historians, for example, investigate cultural, linguistic, biological, and archaeological data. Each tombstone provides insight into a person's life as marked in stone. Information extracted from tombstones can be used to address broad questions involving biological, economic, social, technological, and religious issues. A single tombstone display may offer numerical, linguistic, biological, epidemiological, geological, iconographic, and epigraphic information.

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