Grave markers as Artifact and Document: Using a Family Cemetery to Teach Archaeology

Summary

The Community College of Baltimore County, Essex Campus occupies the former Mace family farm. One of the extant parts of the farm is the cemetery containing 22 headstones and footstones. These stones provide information about cardinal orientations; life dates; pictorial symbols; and semi-religious inscriptions. Students in an Introductory Archaeology class used the cemetery information to connect historic photos and survey maps to the evidence on the landscape; to practice inductive and deductive logic; and to hypothesize about archaeological remains that should be left by household and professional activities. Ambitious students honed their research skills by taking the data to Ancestry.com to search for family descendants and Census records of slaves. The site has the potential to instruct students in the multiple facets of the historical archaeology of Baltimore County.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Revelatory Power of an Artifact in Context   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-14,15