Social Network Structure and New England Gravestone Style

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper examines the role of workshop organization in the emergence of shared stylistic conventions of Colonial-era Massachusetts gravestones. Deetz and Dethlefsen argued that changes in the stylistic motifs carved on New England gravestones show reflect changing attitudes towards death (1967), and that certain motifs diffuse through space and time (1965). A subset of these gravestones can be linked to individual carvers through historic records of payments and signatures carved on the stones. This study employs an archaeological network approach to analyze the decorative variation of carved gravestone motifs. Gravestone style can be analyzed at multiple scales, ranging from individual decorative elements to the motif. The social learning strategies of carvers can be identified using social network analysis techniques that were developed to identify subgroups or cliques. The results of the stylistic social network analysis are then compared with networks based on historic records of workshop co-membership and the geographic distances of these workshops, to examine underlying social learning processes that structure these network relations. These analyses have implications for the ways that geographic proximity and social network structure shape the spatial and temporal patterning of decorative styles that are widely recognized in archaeological typologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36673.0