Graveyards

Different religious practices sport varying beliefs and principles regarding death, but many of them converge towards the burying of the dead to help in the ascent towards a peaceful afterlife. As documented in various anthropological works, this practice has been perpetrated in the Anthropocene, but is primarily dictated by religious grounds; which is a driver of sociological mannerism through psychological means. However, as the world witnesses unparalleled demographic growth, coupled with a proportional urbanisation rate, land space is becoming scarce; hence leading to a surge in property prices which drives housing unaffordability and societal inequity; which ultimately impacts on liveability levels and economic growth. This paper explores the case of the city of Queens in New York and dwells in, through a review of literature, the contemporary discourse in ethics and morality as to the question of who is more important to be housed, the living or the dead, in contrast to contemporary issues of rising importance regarding urbanisation relating to land scarcity, gentrification, and housing unaffordability.

hikuin 39, 2012, p. 131-46.
Sorø Monastery's Cemetery for Laymen. The 2006 Archaeological Excavation of tombs outside the north Transept.
Prior to the construction of a new extension on the north side of the church the National Museum excavated 24 square meters. 25 graves were discovered and 15 of them excavated. 9 skeletons were examined at the University of Copenhagen; they turned out to be five men, two women and two children. There were 6 stone coffin-graves made of bricks and roofed with tiles. In one of these brick graves a woman was buried. Dating of the graves was difficult. But at least 8 of the graves are medieval, as brick coffins are commonly dated from late 12th to 14th century and two other graves are older. According to the Cistercian rule monks were buried without coffins and from what we know about the location of the monasteries cemeteries, it was usually the cemetery of the laymen which was located on the north side of the church. One grave without a coffin and older than brick graves was located in a different orientation that all the rest of the graves. Perhaps this is an indication of the location and orientation of the church's predecessor from the abbey's Benedictine times.
It is far from the first time stone coffin-graves have been discovered and excavated in the site of Sorø Monastery. The first record in Antikvarisk-Topografisk Arkiv is from 1826. The stone coffins are made of bricks travertine or fieldstones. The grave of archbishop and founder of the Cistercian convent in Sorø, Absalon (1201) has been opened and examined three times in 1536, 1827 and 1947.

The sambaquis, located in big part of the Brazilian coast, are the most studied archaeological sites by researches from many areas. Although, the group that built those shellmounds still one of the biggest mysterious from our prehistoric era. From remainders from kitchens, habitation places and graves, the interpretation of the motivation of those coastal groups to build such structures are each time more cleared, with more accurate data. In this publication, based in a series of researches of actual Archaeology and its ramifications, will be published, either, studies from memory space and identities provided from anthropology. Here, it'll be used related data from Jabuticabeira-II site (Jaguaruna, SC - Brazil) to make clear the capacity from that groups to create authentic  bonds with ideas like ancestry, belonging, memories and cultural identity, in a constructive process which includes all of those factors, which was able to remain among centuries in a unchangeable way.

St Catherine's Church, Thomas Street, Dublin, was founded in the late twelfth century and after the Reformation in the sixteenth century became a parish church of the Protestant Church of Ireland. The graveyard to the rear of St Catherine's was converted into a public park by Dublin Corporation in 1985, unfortunately with the loss of many memorials. The present booklet, first published in 1987, includes the inscriptions of the surviving memorials in the church and graveyard and a number of those now lost, together with an historical introduction. Notable individuals who were buried in St Catherine's include Sir William Brabazon, ancestor of the Earls of Meath, in 1552, the Scottish engineer William Mylne in 1790 and Rev James Whitelaw in 1813, while the rebel Robert Emmet was executed in front of the church in 1803.

Kilmainham, County Dublin, was the site first of a monastery founded by St Maignenn in the seventh century, then of a Priory of Knights Hospitallers founded in 1174. In the 1680s the Royal Hospital, a home for old soldiers, was opened on the site, which building is now given over somewhat incongruously to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Despite objections by the Royal Hospital authorities the old monastic cemetery at the western end of the Royal Hospital grounds continued to be used, particularly by poorer Dublin citizens. Efforts by the British Army to close access to the cemetery in the 1760s failed in the face of riots and legal proceedings. Bully's Acre was eventually closed in 1832 after the cholera epidemic of that year caused it to become dangerously congested, although two adjoining military burial places for officers and privates continued in use. The present booklet, originally published in 1989, contains the surviving memorial inscriptions from Bully's Acre and the Officers' Burial Ground, as well as an historical introduction.

This article summarises the main content of a later full-length and referenced book entitled A History of St James's Church and Graveyard, Dublin, From the 12th to 21st Centuries. The first edition of the book went out of print after the death of the publisher in 2022, so a second edition, perforce self-published, was issued in 2023 and is available in paperback or hardcover from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. The book covers topics such as the foundation of St James's Church in the 12th century, the pilgrimage to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the Reformation, recorded burials and memorials in St James's Graveyard, St James’s Fair, the Fountain in James’s Street, body-snatching for purposes of medical research, the building of new St James’s Protestant and Catholic churches in the nineteenth century, World War 1 and the Irish War of Independence. St James’s Church closed as a place of worship in 1963 and in 2013 it was purchased by Inchicore native Dr Pearse Lyons, who with his wife Deirdre Lyons restored the building and converted it into the Pearse Lyons Distillery at St James. St James's Graveyard, in which a total of about 100,000 people were buried, including 9 members of Dr Lyons's family, was acquired by Dublin City Council in 2010 and awaits development as a publicly accessible facility.

Das im Rahmen einer Rettungsgrabung in den
Jahren 2011 und 2012 untersuchte Gräberfeld von Visbek,
Ldkr. Vechta, war bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt völlig unbekannt.
Es besteht aus zahlreichen Pfostengruben ehemaliger
Brandbestattungen, die über eine Fläche streuen, in
der sich auch 185 Körpergräber und über 40 Tiergräber befinden.
Kreisgräben scheinen von ehemals überhügelten
Gräbern zu stammen, wenngleich der Friedhof in direkter
Nachbarschaft eines vorgeschichtlichen Gräberfeldes
liegt. Neben der hohen Zahl der Tiergräber ist besonders
die Varianz dieser Bestattungen kennzeichnend für die Visbeker
Nekropole.

Trench arch drainage systems have been used in rural churches as a possible solution for churches wishing to install lavatory and kitchen facilities where suitable mains drainage does not exist.

This desk-based study project explores the degree to which these systems may pose risks to buried archaeological remains in churchyards.

The report provides an estimate of the number of these systems installed in churches and reviews the potential risks posed to buried ecclesiastical structures, human remains and other funerary archaeological evidence. It makes suggestions about how currently unknown risks can be reduced (for example relating to the use of particular cleaning products, and siting of these system), and proposes further research to help minimise these risks in the future. A forward to the report summarises current Historic England recommendations on the installation of new trench arch drainage systems.

Historic England commissioned Oxford Archaeology South to carry out this research.

This paper is free to download below, or by following the above link to the Historic England website.

Abstract

Every culture has its own philosophical explanation about the afterlife or about death. All such explanations express death as meaningful and need to be expressive. Grief and other concepts in these expressions can be read tangibly from material culture and intangibly from the peoples of existing cultures. Tombstones and memorial tablets can consider the main material culture of death. The present article discusses the information revealed from the tombstones of Holy Trinity Church of Nuwaraeliya. These records belong to the deceased European residents of 19th the cemetery. All the inscriptions on the tombstones and tablets were recorded and only the unrecorded 29 tombstones are subjected to focus in discussion in special reference to the concepts of the death, grief and afterlife in that society. Also the biblical quotations mentioned on tombs are discussed with reference to the Holy Bible. The genealogy of the families could create by using the interrelations of the tombstones and tablets as well as other sources.

Key words: Tombstones, Inscriptions, Death, Christianity

During 2005 it has been developed an archaeological intervention of punctual character in the environment of Virgen de la Sierra Sanctuary (Villarrubia de los Ojos, Ciudad Real), with the exhumation of a sarchofagus made of limestone, with a Visigothic chronology. The tomb contained a male adult person. In this area a rural necropolis is located, still waiting for research. The C-14 and anthropologic analyses realized, as well as the typology of the grave, allow, nowadays, to give one more step in the knowledge of funeral habits of the Meseta Sur for this historical period

The chapel of St Peter and Paul in Zagreb`s central cemetery Mirogoj belongs to a group of the most interesting sacral buildings erected in Croatia`s capital at the end of the 19th century. It is one of the first monumental mausoleums ever built outside the Mirogoj`s arcades and one of the fi nest works by the architect Herman Bollé in his version of the neo-Byzantine style. It was erected in 1891 to serve as lieutenant general Petar Kukulj`s mausoleum by his widow Judita. Petar Kukulj was an Austro Hungarian field-marshal. Since such mausoleums were used by a small number of worshippers, there was no need to make them large. Moreover, the locations where they were going to be built were often very limited in order to leave more space for the cemetery. Therefore, during historicism such cemetery chapels were often erected as centrally planned buildings whether the mausoleums in question were Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical or Jewish. Hence, Bollé was provided with an opportunity to practice designing centrally planned neo-Byzantine buildings. Since he had been working for the Orthodox Church he was mostly compelled to restore earlier buildings and build new ones of a longitudinal plan which could facilitate a greater number of believers. On those churches he hadn’t had a chance to build domes. The chapel of St Peter and Paul at Mirogoj cemetery is one of the Bollé`s most signifi cant neo-Byzantine centrally planned domed buildings. Looking at his work, we can see that Bollé`s neo-Byzantine style is infl uenced by Byzantine, Romanesque and even Renaissance elements. He also found a great inspiration in late Rundbogenstil (Round-arch style) of Berlin architecture of the 1860s and 1870s. Orthodox bishop Miron Nikolić commended his work in the chapel and it seems that it had convinced him to entrust Bollé with a comprehensive renovation work on his cathedral in Pakrac, as well as some other buildings in Pakrac eparchy (parish church in Bjelovar for example). Thanks to his work on Kukulj chapel and renovation work on parish church of Transfi guration in Zagreb, Bolle was later commissioned to renovate the Orthodox monastery Grgeteg on Fruška Gora, and the Church of Holy Spirit, Ruma, and so on. Immediately after the work in the chapel of St Peter and Paul was fi nished, the walls were painted and the interior was furnished. Zagreb Crafts School professor Josip Bauer is the author of all decorations on the walls and icons on the iconostasis. All the icons were made on a gold background showing Bauer`s relation to the Byzantine art of drawing. The author attended the Academy in Munich. Therefore, compositions of his works are inherently in correlation with the tradition of western painting but there is also a very strong infl uence of the Nazarenes. Bauer was obviously familiar with the orthodox iconography which resulted in numerous commissions by the Orthodox Church in Croatia. The position of icons on the iconostasis follows the usual rules of the Orthodox Church, but still there are some differences. In the bottom line we can see Annunciation in imperial court with icons of enthroned Christ and Virgin by its side. On the side doors we can see Michael the Archangel and Gabriel the Archangel. Saint Peter and Paul, to whom the chapel is dedicated, are painted on the left end of the row and Saint John the Baptist is on the right end. Two central rows of icons on the iconostasis depict the scenes from the life of Christ and Virgin Mary. The top of the iconostasis shows the prophets painted in round medallions and in the central axis we see the crucifixion of the Christ flanked by the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist) painted above the icons showing the Holy Trinity and God the Father. Herman Bolle is the author of the design for the iconostasis as well as the entire chapel project. The estimated cost of the chapel was 14.000 forints (28.000 krones) which was a substantial amount in that time.

“Grave ADJ1.F from the Farmhouse of Adji Kui 1 (Margiana, Turkmenistan): Description, and Preliminary Analysis of an Oxus Civilisation Funerary Context”, in: М.Н. Губогло, В.В. Куфтерин (eds) ПРИРОДА – ЧЕЛОВЕК – ОБЩЕСТВО: ОТ ПРОШЛОГО К НАСТОЯЩЕМУ. Сборник статей к юбилею Н.А. Дубовой - M-N. Guboglo and V.V. Kufterin (eds.) NATURE – MAN – SOCIETY: FROM PAST TO PRESENT. Collection of papers in honor of Nadezhda Dubova’s jubilee, Moscow - Staryy Sad: 84 - 97. (co-authored by: G. Rossi Osmida and A. Cengia) ISBN 978-5-89930-162-9

Mentesa Oretana (Villanueva de la Fuente, Ciudad Real) was an important and ancient city located beside the Vicarello’s Goblets Roman Road, with a serie of historic structures and archaeological materials that proves the site´s occupation from Bronze Age until today. Since 1996 several archaeological studies have been published about the works done.

The aim of this paper is to present the unpublished results of systematic excavationes developed since 2003 in the area called “Los Toriles”. Among the most significant findings are the Iron Age wall, the urban area and two cementeries, dated by radiocarbon C14 between the Late Antique an Islamic period.

The information set contributes to the advance of knowledge about urban and funeral habits in the historic towns of Southern Plateu of Spain.
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Mentesa Oretana (Villanueva de la Fuente, Ciudad Real) fue una ciudad relevante e histórica localizada junto a la Vía Augusta, sobre la cual se han venido desarrollando y publicando estudios arqueológicos a partir de 1996. En esta localidad se encuentran elementos arqueológicos correspondientes a un poblamiento continuado desde la Edad del Bronce hasta la actualidad. El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar los resultados inéditos de las excavaciones arqueológicas sistemáticas que desde 2003 se han desarrollado en el paraje denominado 'Los Toriles'. Entre los hallazgos más significativos están su muralla ibérica, un área urbana y dos de sus necrópolis, fechadas mediante radiocarbono entre las épocas tardoantigua e islámica. La información expuesta contribuye al avance del conocimiento sobre los hábitos urbanos y funerarios en las ciudades históricas de la Meseta Sur.

The Moravians had their origins in a pre-Reformation Protestant Church called the
Unitas Fratrum or United Brethren, a Hussite movement which arose in the mid-fifteenth century in Moravia and Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). Moravian congregations were established in Ireland in the 1740s, principally in Dublin and Ulster. The Moravians built their first church in Bishop Street, Dublin, in 1754, which structure still survives although now incorporated in a modern office complex. In 1764 the Moravians opened a burial ground at Whitechurch, County Dublin. The first burial in the new cemetery was that of the minister John Teltschig. There are over 700 stones in the graveyard, each about 31 by 46 centimetres, with men buried on one side and women on the other. Inscriptions from 629 memorials dated from 1764-1900 are included in the present booklet. The principal family names include Alley, Binns, Black, Carey, Clarke, Cooney, Dezouche, Egan, Elliott, Gordon, Jones, Keville, Lemmon, Linfoot, Mann, Moller, Osborne, Price, Smith, Taylor, Warren, Williams. The Dublin Moravian Congregation was disbanded in 1980 and its records are held at Gracehill, County Antrim, with microfilm copies available in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast.

Kaarinan Ravattulan Ristimäellä on ristiretkiaikaisia hautauksia ja varhaiskeskiaikainen kirkon perusta. Tutkielmassa selvitetään arkunnaulojen pohjalta millaisia arkkurakenteita hautauksissa on ollut. Hautaukset ajoittuvat luultavimmin 1100- ja 1200-luvuille.  Lähdeaineistona on 13 ruumishautausta, joista kymmenen sisälsi ruumisarkun nauloja. Löytyneiden arkunnaulojen sijoittumisen pohjalta tutkielmassa on tehty päätelmiä arkkujen rakenteista. Naulojen sijoittumista verrattiin vertailuaineiston, eli Kirkkomäen, Ristinpellon, Birkan ja Ihalan hautauksiin. Tulkintaan vaikutti myös hautausten pohjien muodot sekä kaivaushavainnot. Näiden pohjalta Ristimäen arkut pystyttiin jakamaan neljään ryhmään niiden rakenteiden perusteella. Lisäksi tutkielmassa pohditaan arkuttomia hautauksia ja ruuhiarkkuja.

The shadow of death looms large over the fictional universe of Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather1 (1873-1947). As a result, the graveyard, the most concrete emblem of death, becomes the most expressive motif in the American writer's narratives. The graveyard is used by Cather both literally and metaphorically to describe the landscape and the characters she presents in her oeuvre. In fact, the graveyard is a constant presence in her corpus even when it is not explicitly named. Defying mortal times, a graveyard is an attempt to preserve memory, an attempt to idealize the essence of a deceased individual by the survivors. The urge to memorialise the departed is a universal one, transcending time and place. This urge was a predominant one in Cather's time. As Andrea Gabor explains, in the post-Civil War period: America overcame its democratic ambivalence to public sculpture[….]In the aftermath of the war, scores of towns and cities throughout the North, enjoying the fruits of victory and prosperity, rushed to erect sculptures that would commemorate their local heroes (Gabor 1997, 100).

There are many military burials in St James's Graveyard, James's Street, Dublin, the most notable being that of Sergeant-Major John Lucas VC, who died in 1892. Lucas was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) in 1862 for 'conspicuous bravery' in battle against the native Maori in New Zealand. Long believed to have been lost, Lucas's gravestone was recovered during work converting St James's Church into the Pearse Lyons Distillery (https://www.pearselyonsdistillery.com). St James's Graveyard is one of Dublin's most historic cemeteries, with Protestants and Catholics, soldiers and rebels, rich and poor all finding their last resting place there. For more information on the history of St James's Church and Graveyard and the people buried there, see my free e-book downloadable at https://www.sjbmurphy.com/post/new-book-stjames-church-and-graveyard-dublin

Archaeological sources provide a wide range of information to help understand the social structure of human society in the past. In this paper, the authors deal with the information potential of grave pit modifications and wooden structures in graves at burial sites in the central region of Great Moravia (southeast Moravia, southwest Slovakia). The goal at this point is to define the basic hypotheses and describe the methodological basis along with the research methodology. The authors treat the sources holistically, which means that one of the methodological foundations is the claim that the properties of the whole are not a simple sum of its parts. This means that all recognized elements of the funeral rite and their mutual relations and functions are the center of attention of this research. The primary basis for the research is the assumption that the presence of various wooden structures or wooden burial receptacles in the graves of the Great Moravian period is a common cultural occurrence. It further tests the hypothesis that there was intent behind choosing of these different wooden structures and grave pit modifications and their usage, as well as a potential differentiation based on age or gender in the frequency, quality and selection of these modifications/arrangements and structures.

Príspevok informuje o výsledkoch archeologického výskumu vo svätyni Konkatedrály v roku 2012. Prináša nové zistenia o jej architektonickom vývoji a pochovávaní v interiéri. Príspevok upriamuje pozornosť na nálezy z 13. storočia, ktoré sú prvými hmotnými dokladmi najstaršej sakrálnej stavby Prešova, predchodcu dnešnej Konkatedrály.

Arriving at the turn of the 20th century, immigrant Chinese men in St. John's faced unique challenges and barriers. At the General Protestant Cemetery in St. John's, a small grouping of headstones tells a portion of their story. Using burial markers and records, as well as primary and secondary sources, this article explores the history behind these burials.

W artykule zostanie opisany obraz praktyk pogrzebowych
widocznych na cmentarzyskach stelowych w zestawieniu
z wybranymi źródłami historycznymi i etnograficznymi.
Dotychczasową wiedzę na temat cmentarzysk poszerzy krótki
opis stanu badań oraz charakterystyka cmentarzysk ze stelami
na Podlasiu. Do porównania czasu od śmierci do złożenia
w grobie zmarłego, a zwłaszcza prezentowanej kultury
materialnej posłużą relacje z okresu nowożytnego (XVII
i XIX w.) świadków pogrzebów chłopów litewskich oraz etnografów
podlaskich, którzy opisali zjawisko wykonywania
stel kamiennych. Artykuł jest niejako zachętą dla historyków
i etnografów do skupienia uwagi na kulturze funeralnej chłopów
na Podlasiu w okresie nowożytnym.

Cemeteries from the Central and Late Middle Ages have not yet been studied extensively, even though
cemeteries can provide interesting information about societies. This study assesses patterns in the ways
that individuals were buried at the central medieval cemetery of Reusel (the Netherlands). It was examined
whether patterns in grave morphologies and distribution were different from burial practices in other medieval
cemeteries. In order to do this, the distribution of different grave morphologies and their orientation
were examined. Different grave morphologies appeared all over the cemetery, apart from the ladder gravetype,
which was restricted to the eastern part of the churchyard. Differentiation was also apparent in the
orientation of graves. One woman was buried in a priest-like position. Such patterns suggest that social
differences between individuals were expressed by burial in different parts of the cemetery, and by burial in
different types of graves and orientations. Furthermore, this study confirms the existence of local variation
in burial practices in this period.