Archival Fractals: Bodies, Records, Perspectives and Memories

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The skeletal remains of 154 individuals, including 22 of known identity, were excavated from a rural churchyard in Yorkshire, England. A community-led investigation into the lives of these people was undertaken by the Washburn Heritage Centre Team, some of whom were descendants of the named individuals, and bioarchaeologists. Census and burial records were utilized and vivid details of people’s lives were discovered from newspaper reports and medical records. Diaries of a local man also provided unique insights into daily life, including the shapes of marginalized lives; for example, his mother comes into focus only through the tasks he must do when she’s absent. The lives of child mill workers were also made visible through painstaking research and intricate artwork: their names now known; their deaths now mourned. Skeletal analysis was not privileged in this project – it was one fractional dimension that provided shape but was not the whole.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow