Study Guide Reading Gravestones
Table of Contents
1. GETTING STARTED
[What kind of Evidence are Gravestones?] [Why do Scholars Value Gravestones?] [Types of Analysis ]
What kind of Evidence are Gravestones?
Cemeteries provide a rich resource not only of biographical data, but also for evaluating changes in religious and cultural practice over time. Scholars have long noted that changes in the iconography and inscriptions in New England gravestones can help us assess when and how individual communities made the transformation from Calvinism to more liberal forms of Christianity. While scholars have long understood that gravestone art differs depending on the town in which the stones are carved, scholars have debated the extent to which ethnicity and religious affiliation impacts the type of stones found in cemeteries. Other factors such as the age of the deceased can also impact the type of images placed on stones, the shape of the stone, and the inscription used. Because gravestones were used by a broad segment of the population, some people feel they are a “more representative source of information than words” (Prown cites Glassie 73).
Why do Scholars Value Gravestones?
Gravestones provide scholars with information about individuals as well as about communities. On the individual level, gravestones can fill in biographical information about when a person lived, where they died, how old they were, and to whom they were related. On the community level, inscriptions on gravestones provide essential information about diseases and the average life span in a given area. By comparing different cemeteries, we can get a sense of what makes a community distinctive as well as how it corresponds to larger religious and cultural trends. Some gravestones are signed by the carver who made them. By examining gravestones by a particular carver, we can get a sense of how individual artisans’ styles developed.
Types of Analysis
Gravestones are usually analyzed in three ways.
- First, people tend to read the inscriptions. Inscriptions can provide us with biographical data but also reflect changes in religious belief: for example, in Protestant New England cemeteries inscriptions often change from (1) "Here lies" to (2) "Here lies [buried] the body [corruptible, what was mortal] of" to (3) “in memory of” over the course of the eighteenth century. The type of inscription used can tell us something about the individual’s religious beliefs.
- Second people tend to look at the types of images depicted on the stones. In Protestant New England cemeteries there is often a shift from the Calvinist “death’s head,” to the Arminian Cherub, to the Unitarian “Urn and Willow” over the course of the eighteenth century. James Deetz and Edwin S. Dethlefsen argue that the shift in iconography and epitaph reflects the shift in New England theology from the concept of limited atonement to universal atonement (redemption) in this era. People who are interested in the images (iconography) used on stones may also be interested in the change in an individual carver’s style over time.
- Third, people tend to think about the context in which individual stones are found. This type of analysis usually involves analyzing the types of inscriptions and iconography used on stones in an entire cemetery or section of a cemetery. This type of analysis is called a “seriation study”: that is, a chronological analysis of the stones based on change and continuity in material style. People who do seriation studies often compare one cemetery to another to determine whether era, geography, religion, or ethnicity are behind the trends found in particular cemeteries. The worksheets in this study guide will allow you to perform all three types of analyses.