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10 books match the query 'Sepulchral monuments'

cover of Badger Boneyards: The Eternal Rest of the Story

Badger Boneyards

The Eternal Rest of the Story

Dennis McCann

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2010

The bodies are buried, but the stories are not. From the ornate tombs of Milwaukee beer barons to displaced Chippewa graves and miniscule family plots, Badger Boneyards: The Eternal Rest of the Story unearths the stories of Wisconsin. Football great John Heisman is buried here, as is the state's smallest man, a woman whose tombstone names her murderer, and the boy who would not tell a lie and paid the price.
 
Even in a graveyard, peace proves hard to come by: Wisconsin's Native American tribes have fought for undisturbed grounds and proper burial. A patch of Belgian graves now resides beneath a parking lot while the headstones cluster nearby, and the inhabitants of a Bayfield cemetery were unearthed by a raging flood. Sometimes the dead are recalled with only a first name, and sometimes no name at all. Following the clues in tips from readers, unusual epitaphs, and well-worn stones, Dennis McCann finds the melancholy, the humorous, the tragic, and the universal in Wisconsin's cities of the dead.
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cover of Cemeteries Gravemarkers

Cemeteries Gravemarkers

Richard Meyer

Utah State University Press, 1992

Cemeteries house the dead, but gravemarkers are fashioned by the living, who record on them not only their pleasures, sorrows, and hopes for an afterlife, but also more than they realize of their history, ethnicity, and culture. Richard Meyer has gathered twelve original essays examining burial grounds through the centuries and across the land to give a broad understanding of the history and cultural values of communities, regions, and American society at large.
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cover of Chersonesan Studies 1: The Polychrome Grave Stelai from the Early Hellenistic Necropolis

Chersonesan Studies 1

The Polychrome Grave Stelai from the Early Hellenistic Necropolis

By Richard Posamentir

University of Texas Press, 2010

Chersonesan Studies 1 presents the painted grave stelai of the Early Hellenistic necropolis of Chersonesos Taurike, a Greek city on the northern shore of the Black Sea. This unique collection of over one hundred objects is of major interest to students of ancient art and Greek culture. Their polychrome decoration has been extraordinarily well preserved, a rarity in the ancient world. They compose a remarkable, even unique, body of evidence of Greek funerary memorial sculpture: their shapes are gender-specific, their depicted objects are gender- and age-specific, and they can be ascribed to a handful of specific workshops. Their surprising uniformity requires an explanation, since comparable assemblages from other parts of the Greek world show substantial diversity in all these aspects.

This book provides the first complete catalog and description of the stelai, together with full-color illustrations of all the significant stelai and many details. Through his painstaking recovery and reassembling of fragments, as well as the use of advanced photographic techniques, Richard Posamentir has been able to add a whole new dimension to the study of these artifacts. The volume covers the history of the stelai, analysis of the workshops, and reconstruction of the necropolis that the stelai originally graced. A comparison chapter discusses how the stelai fit into the context of Greek funerary art and provides insights into the culture and society of a city on the Black Sea.

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cover of Ethnicity and the American Cemetery

Ethnicity and the American Cemetery

Richard Meyer

University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

Cemeteries are open cultural texts, available to be read and appreciated by anyone who takes the time to learn their special language. Ethnicity and the American Cemetery explores the manner in which ethnic groups in America have made their cemeteries a most eloquent voice for the expression of values and worldviews.  
    Contributors examine the material objects found within the cemeteries, as well as the customary practices bound to them. Contributors are from the fields of folklore, cultural history, historical archaeology, landscape architecture, and philosophy. Heavily illustrated, the volume also features an extensive annotated bibliography.

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cover of Latin Inscriptions in Oxford

Latin Inscriptions in Oxford

Compiled with Translations by Reginald H. Adams

Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015

For six centuries following its foundation, Latin was the main language written and spoken at the University of Oxford. Today, one can still find Latin inscriptions carved into many of its monuments, as well those of the city, dating from the medieval period to the present day. But few of us can discern what all of these inscriptions mean.
           
For Latin Inscriptions in Oxford, Reginald H. Adams, a former scholar at St. John’s College, University of Oxford, has translated a selection of Latin inscriptions. Among them, he finds a great many tributes and memorials—to Queen Anne, Cardinal Wolsey, and T. E. Lawrence, but also to Irene Frude, a “most kindly landlady” on Little Clarendon who “provided each day for almost thirty-five years enormous breakfasts.” Some of the inscriptions offer concise commentary—“Without experiment, it is not possible to know anything adequately.” While others are instructive like the Rhodes House’s warning, “Let no one who is smoke-bearing enter here.”
           
Evocative mementoes of the past, the inscriptions collected by Adams bring insight to the vivid history of Oxford, the city and the university.
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cover of Mummies and Mortuary Monuments: A Postprocessual Prehistory of Central Andean Social Organization

Mummies and Mortuary Monuments

A Postprocessual Prehistory of Central Andean Social Organization

By William H. Isbell

University of Texas Press, 1997

Since prehistoric times, Andean societies have been organized around the ayllu, a grouping of real or ceremonial kinspeople who share labor, resources, and ritual obligations. Many Andean scholars believe that the ayllu is as ancient as Andean culture itself, possibly dating back as far as 6000 B.C., and that it arose to alleviate the hardships of farming in the mountainous Andean environment.

In this boldly revisionist book, however, William Isbell persuasively argues that the ayllu developed during the latter half of the Early Intermediate Period (around A.D. 200) as a means of resistance to the process of state formation. Drawing on archaeological evidence, as well as records of Inca life taken from the chroniclers, Isbell asserts that prehistoric ayllus were organized around the veneration of deceased ancestors, whose mummified bodies were housed in open sepulchers, or challups, where they could be visited by descendants seeking approval and favors. By charting the temporal and spatial distribution of chullpa ruins, Isbell offers a convincing new explanation of where, when, and why the ayllu developed.

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cover of New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones: History in the Landscape

New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones

History in the Landscape

Veit, Richard F

Rutgers University Press, 2008

From the earliest memorials used by Native Americans to the elaborate structures of the present day, Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied use grave markers to take an off-beat look at New Jersey’s history that is both fascinating and unique.

New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones presents a culturally diverse account of New Jersey’s historic burial places from High Point to Cape May and from the banks of the Delaware to the ocean-washed Shore, to explain what cemeteries tell us about people and the communities in which they lived. The evidence ranges from somber seventeenth-century decorations such as hourglasses and skulls that denoted the brevity of colonial life, to modern times where memorials, such as a life-size granite Mercedes Benz, reflect the materialism of the new millennium. Also considered are contemporary novelties such as pet cemeteries and what they reveal about today’s culture. To tell their story the authors visited more than 1,000 burial grounds and interviewed numerous monument dealers and cemetarians.

This richly illustrated book is essential reading for history buffs and indeed anyone who has ever wandered inquisitively through their local cemeteries.

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cover of Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy

Texas Graveyards

A Cultural Legacy

By Terry Jordan

University of Texas Press, 1982

Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones and mounds, hex signs and epitaphs, intricate landscapes and unusual decorations represent a previously unstudied and unappreciated wealth of Texas folk art and tradition. Texas Graveyards not only marks the distinct ethnic and racial traditions in burial practices but also preserves a Texas legacy endangered by changing customs, rural depopulation, vandalism, and the erosion of time.

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cover of The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell

The Speaking Stone

Stories Cemeteries Tell

Michael Griffith

Ohio University Press, 2021

Published by the University of Cincinnati Press

The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards. While working on a novel, author and longtime Cincinnati resident Michael Griffith starts visiting Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, the nation’s third-largest cemetery. Soon he’s taking almost daily jaunts, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection of essays that emerge from chance encounters with an interesting headstone, odd epitaph, unusual name, or quirk of memory. Researching obituaries, newspaper clippings, and family legacies, Griffith uncovers stories of race, feminism, art, and death.

Rather than sticking to the cemetery’s most famous, or infamous, graves, Griffith stays true to the principle of ramble and incidental discovery. The result is an eclectic group of subjects, ranging from well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright to those much less celebrated— a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances. Nearly ninety photos add dimension and often an element of playfulness.

The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what does not, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempt to leave monuments that last. In doing so, it beautifully weaves connections born out of the storyteller’s inquisitive mind.

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cover of This Place of Silence: Ohio's Cemeteries and Burial Grounds

This Place of Silence

Ohio's Cemeteries and Burial Grounds

Ian Adams; Randall Lee Schieber; Robin L. Smith

Ohio University Press, 2024

This Place of Silence is a photographic portrait of Ohio’s cemeteries and burial grounds by Ohio photographers Ian Adams and Randall Lee Schieber. The text and photo captions by Robin L. Smith provide an overview of the history of burial grounds, from prehistoric mounds through modern “green” cemeteries—and many fascinating details about gravestones, mausoleums, statuary, and cemetery landscapes. The introduction provides an overview of the historical place of burial grounds in our society and of their value today not only as rich sources of history but also as repositories of art, architecture, and nature. Cemeteries record the history of their communities in their names and dates, but they also tell us how a community wanted its history recorded: How did this community see itself? What was important to that community? Who were the prominent people, and what did they accomplish? Graveyards, especially older ones, are also full of quirky names and mysteries. Who would name a child Nimrod, and where did that name come from? Why would two families build identical side-by-side mausoleums? Who would want a grave marker that looks like a pile of stones? Chapters cover prehistoric mounds and early European American burial grounds; the evolution from rural cemeteries in the nineteenth century to modern green burials; art, architecture, and symbolism in cemeteries; cemeteries and nature; military and institutional burial grounds; and distinctive ethnic cemeteries. The authors highlight and showcase these often beautiful but sometimes neglected pieces of history. Cemeteries are not dark, morbid places to be avoided, but historic landscapes that are full of beauty, hope, and honor for those Ohioans who came before us.
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