Geographic and Landscape Perspectives on Historical Burial Grounds in Montgomery County, MD.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Studying Human Behavior within Cemeteries (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historical and archaeological research in Montgomery County, MD is exploring the relationships between burial grounds and surrounding landscape features in order to better understand these sites and find graveyards whose locations have been lost. The topographic settings of family burial grounds and their relationship to houses, property boundaries and roads is helping to locate apparently "lost" cemetery sites. Further research into the places where people were held in slavery and post Civil War African American communities is providing clues for recovering the location of missing Antebellum African American cemeteries.The distribution of stone materials for grave markers relative to underlying geology, historical quarries, known stone cutters and transportation routes is helping to provide context for some of the memorial choices made by surviving family members. These initiatives will provide more reliable locations for the cemeteries in Montgomery County and a fuller context for appreciating the significance of these vulnerable sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Studying Human Behavior within Cemeteries (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology