Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, holds one of the most dramatic landscapes of death in the nation. Its burial grounds show the sweep of Southern history on an epic scale, ...from the earliest English encounters with the Powhatan at the falls of the James River through slavery, the Civil War, and the long reckoning that followed. And while the region's deathways and burial practices have developed in surprising directions over these centuries, one element has remained stubbornly the same: the color line. But something different is happening now. The latest phase of this history points to a quiet revolution taking place in Virginia and beyond. Where white leaders long bolstered their heritage and authority with a disregard for the graves of the disenfranchised, today activist groups have stepped forward to reorganize and reclaim the commemorative landscape for the remains of people of color and religious minorities.
In Death and Rebirth in a Southern City, Ryan K. Smith explores more than a dozen of Richmond's most historically and culturally significant cemeteries. He traces the disparities between those grounds which have been well-maintained, preserving the legacies of privileged whites, and those that have been worn away, dug up, and built over, erasing the memories of African Americans and indigenous tribes. Drawing on extensive oral histories and archival research, Smith unearths the heritage of these marginalized communities and explains what the city must do to conserve these gravesites and bring racial equity to these arenas for public memory. He also shows how the ongoing recovery efforts point to a redefinition of Confederate memory and the possibility of a rebirthed community in the symbolic center of the South.
The book encompasses, among others, St. John's colonial churchyard; African burial grounds in Shockoe Bottom and on Shockoe Hill; Hebrew Cemetery; Hollywood Cemetery, with its 18,000 Confederate dead; Richmond National Cemetery; and Evergreen Cemetery, home to tens of thousands of black burials from the Jim Crow era. Smith's rich analysis of the surviving grounds documents many of these sites for the first time and is enhanced by an accompanying website, www.richmondcemeteries.org. A brilliant example of public history, Death and Rebirth in a Southern City reveals how cemeteries can frame changes in politics and society across time.
Arnos Vale Cemetery has been, until recently, a relatively little-known but unique cemetery amongst the West Country cemeteries. Located on the outskirts of Bristol, which is often referred to as the ...'second' or 'third' city in Britain historically, the cemetery has remained largely undiscovered and unexplored in terms of its history and archaeology. Established by an Act of Parliament in 1837, it continues to be an active site of burial and memorial today, and transcends a 175-year time period, through the Industrial Revolution and two world wars. The aim of this study is to provide detailed analysis and insight into the complexities of developing and maintaining a provincial Victorian garden cemetery. It aims to highlight the important role that this particular site had in terms of exploring cemetery development of those cemeteries that were being designed and constructed during the 1830s. Furthermore, how a surrounding network of local endeavour and activity enabled this and how complex relationships emerge regarding both development of the site and its maintenance over time. To achieve this, this thesis implements innovative theory and methodology that has yet to be applied to cemetery research in any depth of detail through the application of both network theory and necrogeography combined to explore the purpose, intended functions, phenomenology of landscape, and the realities of maintenance.
The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh is the second volume of the final reports on the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh, northwest Syria. The 12-year field campaigns at Tell el-Kerkh yielded several ...unexpected archaeological findings. The existence of the oldest cultural deposits from the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (c. 8700-8300 BC) in northwestern Syria was revealed. The investigations also revealed that several large and complex societies had existed from the late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to the middle Pottery Neolithic periods (c. 7600–6000 BC). One of the most conspicuous findings of the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh was the discovery of a Pottery Neolithic cemetery dating between c. 6400 and 6100 BC, which makes it one of the oldest outdoor communal cemeteries in West Asia. This book focuses specifically on this cemetery. It reports the discovery of over 240 burials and discusses the process of the formation and development of the cemetery. Initially used for traditional house burials in a corner of the settlement, the cemetery eventually became a graveyard that was physically separated from the residential buildings and consisted only of graves. In other words, burials that were deeply related to each house developed into an outdoor communal cemetery of the settlement. The Kerkh Neolithic cemetery was a precursor to the wider development of communal cemeteries in West Asia, and its investigation provides us with a deeper understanding of Neolithic society in West Asia.
This volume is the third in a series of reports documenting excavations at the large protohistoric site of ‘En Esur and its extensive burial grounds, located in the northern Sharon plain along a ...major ancient trade route. The four relatively intact and undisturbed Early Bronze Age burial caves presented in the current volume, excavated in the framework of the Cross Israel Highway Project, revealed over 2000 complete ceramic vessels representing an uninterrupted sequence over several hundred years. These four burial caves comprise an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the society, trade relations and burial customs in the region during the Early Bronze Age.
One of the goals of ihe 2023 season of the Abydos South Project (ASP) was to investigate a promising but unexcavated portion of land to the west of the pyramid of King Ahmose in South Abydos. This ...area, which was used for herd animals up until 2022, has long been thought to be a possible location for the New Kingdom town associated with the Ahmose pyramid complex. Brief work was conducted there in the 1960s by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, and David O'Connor excavated a trial trench there during his initial examination of Abydos in 1966. Here, Smith-Sangster discusses the Ahmose North Cemetery appears to stretch over the entire area, nearly 200 m from east to west and over 100 m from sou!h to north. It is very likely that the cemetery also extends for some distance under the modern Islamic cemetery that lies to the immediate south of the site, suggesting we have found the northernmost boundary of the necropolis. The portion of the site excavated during the 2023 season encompassed approximately 40 burials ranging from simple pit burials to large, multi-chambered shaft tombs.
