Why Cemeteries?

Cemeteries are repositories for the dead, where we go to seek solace, meditate, and commune with those dearly departed. Graveyards are also sites of historical record, a library of sorts where each stone tells a story and each life was meaningful.

Millions of stones in cemeteries offer glimpses of the people who have gone before us, revealing a spark of humanity in the dead that we only normally see in the living.

A graveyard has an important status in our society — not just as a location to bury our loved ones, but as a place to memorialize, visit, and remember them. It is also a place where we separate, where bonds are broken, where we must let go and finally accept the parting of ways. That is, and always has been, the true essence of a cemetery.

In this chapter, we'll examine the history and cultural importance of cemeteries, plus some of the major types of graveyards.

A HISTORY OF CEMETERIES

We humans have been burying our dead since ancient times as a way of showing respect: a dignified send-off via flame, mummification, burial, or immersion in water. Evidence indicates the Neanderthals first buried their dead fifty thousand years ago in the caves of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in modern France, while other archaeologists claim the practice started as early as one hundred thousand years ago within Mount Precipice/Qafzeh Cave in Israel. Neanderthals were also the first to place flowers in graves with the remains.

The first tomb used for only one individual dates back to 12000 BCE in Israel (containing the remains of a man and his dog), while the Chinese have been credited with making the first coffins (the oldest of which dates back to 5000 BCE and holds the remains of a young girl). The Chinese were also the first to build boat coffins, and the first to use tree trunks as coffins (4000–3000 BCE). The Egyptians developed a process known as mummification for ritualistic purposes around 2600 BCE and began the practice of marking graves with stones bearing the general likeness of the person who had died. The first pyramid — and thus the first documented cemetery marker or monument — was the Step Pyramid constructed for King Zoser at Saqqara in 2750 BCE.

Christian burials began when the Romans excavated burial chambers underground and outside of the city. Christians banded together to form burial societies to ensure that the faithful were interred collectively in a respectful and spiritually appropriate manner. By the third century, several levels of burial chambers existed below ground, and these catacombs became property held in common by the Christian community. Basilicas were built above the catacombs so mass could be said over the graves of the saints and martyrs buried below. Christian burials made directly in the ground that adjoined a church — but could not be interred in the church — later became the norm, and some of these churchyards can still be found scattered across the Christian world.

Across the Atlantic in North America, the Clovis people, early mammoth hunters, practiced respectful burial of their dead more than twelve thousand years ago. The grave of a twelve-to-eighteen-month-old boy was discovered in 1968 in Montana. The young child's remains were covered with powdered red ochre (a sign of respect and ritual) and surrounded by 125 artifacts, including dozens of spear points and antler tools, to aid him on his journey into the afterlife.

With the advancements of the Industrial Revolution during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people began to be buried farther away from home. Large city cemeteries formed and quickly filled up, and cemeteries dealt with this overcrowding by allowing a body to rest in a grave for a set amount of years (or sometimes months) before digging up the remains and reusing the plot for someone else. (The excavated remains were then tossed into a communal burial pit located elsewhere on the grounds.) Another option was to rebury the remains deeper in the earth and then bury on top of them. These methods were especially useful in paupers' cemeteries of the nineteenth century. Today, lack of sufficient burial space is again creating a dilemma, and many of the suggestions being considered harken back to remedies from the 1700 and 1800s.

It's impossible to say where and when the first cemetery in the United States was founded, since hundreds of tiny burial grounds were created when settlers needed to bury family members. Cemeteries and graveyards of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while more organized, were not welcoming places. Death was an accepted part of life in the Old World, but death was feared, dreaded, and mourned in the New World.

The early Puritans believed in sparse burials with little to no decoration. Most stones bore only a brief inscription, usually the person's name and the date of death. The only decoration on these early graves was rather morbid. A common symbol was the winged death's-head figure: a winged skull with crossed bones symbolizing the religious belief that death brought eternal life. Each community had its stylized version of the death's-head, based on how its religious leaders and stonecarvers thought it should look. During this time, a stylized hourglass with wings could also be found on gravestones, symbolizing the flight of time for the mortal soul. Death would later be depicted as a skeletal man with a scythe: "The Grim Reaper," the harvester of souls (image A).

During the late 1700s, Colonial New England began to loosen its harsh orthodox religious views, and gravestones started to show more uplifting images of cherubs and angels, although the death's-head continued to be used in and around Boston. By the 1790s and early 1800s, willow trees (image B) and floral motifs began to decorate tombstones, providing a less morbid outlook toward death, and instead focusing on more positive natural images. This was also the age of portrait stones, where a general likeness of the deceased's stoic face was carved upon his marker (image C).

With the arrival of the nineteenth century, attitudes about death began to change. Mourning became popular and death became more mysterious. In 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was considered the epitome of what an American cemetery could and should be. This original "rural" or "garden" cemetery was landscaped to make it appear more park-like. Inspired by the English garden city movement, the rural cemetery was composed of acres of rolling hills and pastoral settings, featuring lakes, walking paths, wooded groves, and other landscape designs that made the cemetery feel tranquil and welcoming. This was a place to "take the air," a genteel way...