Monuments, Commemoration, and Heritage: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Cemeteries and Commemoration

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Wallman. Matt Litteral.

In recent years, the southern United States has experienced a growing movement to remove confederate memorials from public spaces. These efforts have initiated a dialogue about representations of heritage, and the ethics of memorialization. Arguments for the removal of these memorials and monuments maintain that they misrepresent the past, and minimize the suffering of enslaved people and their descendants. Gamble Plantation was one of several sugar plantations established along the Manatee...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Boroughs.

In 2013, Mount Vernon's archaeology department began a long term research project to locate the graves of enslaved and emancipated individuals interred within the African-American cemetery on the home quarter of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate.  Four years deep, dozens of graves have been reclaimed from new growth forest and the cemetery has taken on new life as a touchstone of memory and an interpretive vehicle for a diverse array of descendants, scholars, and visitors to the historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brant W Venables.

Examining memorializations of the Revolutionary War is fruitful in tracing how important events are crafted into founding national mythologies.  However, such analyses underplay the presence of ethnic groups that utilized monuments and commemorative ceremonies to gain wider acceptance in American society or challenge the dominant heritage narratives. This paper examines Saratoga monuments dedicated to Polish-American Engineer Thaddeus Kościuszko, the Saratoga monument to Irish-American Timothy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara F. Mascia.

Historical Perspectives, Inc. completed a large, multi-year study of the Northern Cemetery of the Staten Island Quarantine Grounds. The archaeological team located and excavated a portion of the cemetery, which was utilized for the burial of patients from the Marine Hospital in the 1840s and 1850s.  The individuals buried here were mostly immigrants who died in sight of the United States, which they hoped would provide them with a new life.  The narrative of the patients at the Marine Hospital...

DOCUMENT Citation Only M. Jay Stottman.

Amid recent efforts to remove Confederate Monuments throughout cities in the South, the city of Louisville recently removed its 121 year old monument situated on a public street in the middle of the University of Louisville’s main campus.  During disassembly of the monument, a cornerstone box containing commemorative objects was found.  This paper discusses these objects and their relationship to the memory of the "Lost Cause" movement espoused by ex-Confederates.  It also examines the battle...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Veit.

This paper provides a brief introduction to Jamaica's 18th and 19th century burial grounds using select examples from Port Royal, Falmouth, Spanish Town, and plantation burial grounds, especially the Orange Valley estate.  Documentary sources relating to burial and commemoration are also examined.  The paper argues that Jamaican gravemarkers clearly reflect the social stratification present in colonial Jamaica, and highlight the great wealth that sugar planting brought to the island.  Jamaican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Harold Mytum.

As the First World War commemorations draw to a close, the memorials at Sledmere, East Yorkshire, indicate the attitudes to the war held by one individual, Sir Mark Sykes, the 6th baronet. Widely known as an author of the Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up the Middle East between France and Britain following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, thereby creating countries such as Iraq and Syria, he managed and invested in his substantial estate and house on the Yorkshire Wolds. He remembered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie K. Wesp. Felipe Gaitan. Jimena Lobo Guerrero. Chelsi Slotten.

 This paper offers an overview of the exceptional collection of archaeological and bioarchaeological data recently recovered in salvage excavations carried out during the restoration of the San Ignacio Jesuit church in Bogotá, Colombia –one  of the most important monuments erected in the Spanish colonial province of New Granada. The archaeological record documented in San Ignacio encapsulates over four centuries of domestic, funerary, spiritual, and bodily practices that speak to complex...