“Coffins ”, Wood and the Status of the People Buried

Abstract

Human burials from archaeological contexts have often been analysed and described. Few of these analyses have dealt with the style of the grave and the identification of the wood utilised in the “coffin ” construction. This paper describes such an analysis, the primary object of which is to develop a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the people buried in a cemetery outside the town of Vredendal in South Africa. An absence of regular coffins for adults, the use of fruit boxes, a drawer and barrel staves and the use of pine in coffin construction indicate that these people were probably farm labourers living in poor circumstances at the turn of the century.