Reading the chisel’s chippings: Changing religious attitudes about death and eighteenth-century New England gravestones

Summary

The eighteenth century was a dynamic period of religious change, particularly in New England, as the Calvinistic influence of the Puritan settlers waned and new denominations emerged. This was also a time of rapidly changing funerary ritual, when the inscriptions on grave markers shifted from emphases on marking the remains of the decedent to commemorating them, and gravestone motifs became more diverse. This study examines the ways that religious attitudes towards death change, using a database of texts and decorative attributes inscribed on eighteenth-century New England gravestones, and their linkage with prominent decorative motifs on grave markers. Some argue that changes in grave marker decorations, epitaphs, and inscriptions reflect ideological changes, while others argue these changes reflect long-term social changes. Specifically, this study examines spread of novel decorative and linguistic elements found on gravestones during this period. Not only do the textual shifts in gravestone inscription enable us to characterize the diffusion of religious ideas, the linkage between decorative imagery and religious ideas informs middle range theories about the archaeology of religion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Evolutionary Archaeologies: New Approaches, Methods, and Empirical Sufficiency

Keywords

Spatial Coverage