Twice Buried at Stenton: GPR in an Urban Family Cemetery

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The nineteenth-century Logan family cemetery is today marked by a large cement pad that was poured at some point during the 1950s across the cemetery in order to prevent vandalism. An inset marker listing some of the names of those interred and a fragmentary stone wall are the only indications of the former mortuary landscape. Even though it is now part of a public city park, this cemetery was once part of the Logan estate, and those buried here once resided in Stenton, one of the earliest historic houses preserved in Philadelphia. A ground-penetrating radar (GPR) investigation was conducted to document the extent of burials in relation to the cement pad. The survey revealed a more intriguing landscape development than is apparent today, suggesting a complicated relationship between the Logan property and its increasingly urban surroundings.

Cite this Record

Twice Buried at Stenton: GPR in an Urban Family Cemetery. Meagan Ratini, Elisabeth A. LaVigne, Deborah L. Miller, Dennis Pickeral. 2020 ( tDAR id: 457353)

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Keywords

General
Cemetery Landscape Urban

Geographic Keywords
United States of America

Temporal Keywords
19th-20th Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 542