Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? How Pet Cemeteries Document Changing Human-Animal Relationships

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Public pet cemeteries represent a relatively recent phenomenon in western European/North American societies. First appearing in the late 19th century in England, France and the United States, their numbers quickly expanded across these and other countries as people commemorated their non-human friends in new ways. The locations and organisation of these cemeteries as well as gravestone inscriptions are revealing of the changing attitudes towards non-human animals. They tell of the roles pets held in people’s lives (i.e., were they treasured friends? or important members of the family?) and their perceived roles in the afterlife (i.e., did they have a place in heaven?). This project describes an archaeological survey of four of Britain’s pet cemeteries. These include Britain’s oldest public pet cemetery in Hyde Park, its largest in Ilford and two working-class pet cemeteries in northern England. Comparisons are made to contemporary human burial practices in order to identify how animals were treated differently and similarly. The goal is to document changing patterns in animal commemoration and contextualize British society’s current relationship with animals while highlighting the importance of these spaces in documenting social history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23293