Decoding the Sepulchral Closet: Reading Between the Lines of Heteronormativity in Graveyards

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper will explore LGBTQ grieving within tangible, temporary, and virtual spaces through examples from Montgomery County Maryland and the larger Washington, DC metropolitan area. Historical burial grounds are heteronormative landscapes, most visibly true in family graveyards and in biological family groupings in community cemeteries where women and children are identified on markers as wife or child. Because the disposition of remains for legally unmarried adults has been decided by the next of kin as recognized by law, queer people are seldom buried with their lovers or families of choice. Instead, they are often buried alone or with their families of origin, and in the case of trans individuals, with their dead names. Recognizing the historical burial sites of LGBTQ people and ways of queer remembrance requires learning to read between the lines of cemetery heteronormativity to find the people who don’t fit the pattern.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow