A Material Sentimentality: Exploring Childhood Via the Death Event at Freedman’s Cemetery, Dallas, Texas (1869-1907)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This study explores childhood through materiality and the death event, focusing on the sentimentalization of children through funerary elaboration, the dressing of the corpse, and the inclusion of material objects in the grave. Specifically, I will explore the burial contexts of children (ages 0-15) from the 19th and early 20th centuries to illuminate the ways in which parents chose to memorialize and sentimentalize their deceased children and what this may mean for the broader experience of childhood during this time. My exemplar site is Freedman’s Cemetery, an African American cemetery located in Dallas, Texas, that was utilized from 1869 to 1907. My comparative sample is constructed using a non-exhaustive list of historic American cemeteries that span time, space, class, and race/ethnicity to illuminate the varied experiences of childhood and its relationship to funerary treatment within these differing contexts.    

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow