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Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture

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Cemeteries and Gravemarkers is the leading book on interpreting culture from cemeteries. The edited volume includes research by geographers, art historians, historians, folklorists, and anthropologists on various aspects of cemeteries and their gravestones in the United States. The volume encompasses the diversity of approaches to cemetery research from various disciplines, focusing on the cultural information to be obtained. The book is quite readable for the interested member of the public, but also suitable as a text for a university or college course and is a principal scholarly reference for researchers. The book is divided into four sections, including "Icon and Epitaph," "Origins and Influences," "Ethnicity and Regionalism," and "Business and Pleasure." In the first section we learn of the meaning of the icons or motifs on the gravestones of children, loggers in the Northwest, and other insightful discussions of imagery. For example, while it is common knowledge that lambs are a typical motif used for children's gravestones, an article by Ellen Synder provides an in-depth discussion with excellent illustrations of various images used in childrens' gravestones. In the second section, "Origins and Influences," we learn of the unusual folk traditions of cemeteries in the South by Gregory Jeane, as well as the splendid monuments in New Orleans cemeteries, in an informative article by Peggy McDowell. Perhaps the most important part of the book for anthropologists is section three, "Ethnicity and Regionalism." Here we have four articles that provide information on the diversity of cemeteries used by enslaved Africans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Anglo-Americans. These articles provide a solid basis for interpretations of culture from cemeteries. In the last part of the book, "Business and Pleasure," we are treated to an excellent summary of the growth of the "rural or garden cemetery movement" in the nineteenth century, with its elaborate gravestones and picturesque cemeteries. The editor, Richard Meyer, is to be commended for compiling such as diverse group of scholars for a conference that resulted in the present book. The book is well referenced, with excellent illustrations, and many insights to be found.

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Genealogy~ Practice of confusing the dead & irritating the living.
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