Desecration as Creation: Material Tracings of Vandalism and Witchcraft in a Northern California Pioneer Cemetery.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Materialities: Tracing Connections through Materiality of Daily Life", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In a small pioneer cemetery in Oroville, California a headstone marks the grave of Annie M. Silvers, who based on the dates on her headstone, purportedly lived to 230 years of age. When paired with her distinctive headstone and iconography in an otherwise Christian cemetery, it has been suggested in local folklore that Annie was a witch. This presentation examines the multi-year tracing of material engagements with Annie’s headstone, ranging from overt acts of vandalism to care and maintenance. In doing so, we will consider how successive acts of vandalism, and altering the very materiality of the grave itself, might paradoxically further reinforce Annie’s status in the local community as a witch. More broadly, this presentation considers how Annie and her headstone can illuminate broader anthropological themes such as contestation in funerary spaces, and the continued ways in which the dead become entangled in concerns of the living, even post-mortem.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Global Materialities: Tracing Connections through Materiality of Daily Life

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow