Death and Commemoration

Abstract

The study of graveyards and memorial monuments in Britain in the early modern and modern periods is underdeveloped. Despite the many (maybe thousands) of graveyard survey and recording projects that have been undertaken, wide-ranging historical research questions have barely begun to be addressed. This paper identifies a number of possible directions for academic research, clustering around the three areas of demographic, family and social structure; the production and expression of identity and changing beliefs about the living and the dead. It is suggested that the full potential of graveyard studies has not yet been exploited for a variety of reasons. First, the essentially local remit and interest of most projects has not encouraged any orientation towards ambitious historical questions; secondly, the absence of any standardised way of recording graveyards and any way of monitoring the work that has been done; and thirdly, the failure of post-medieval archaeologists to develop many extensive or imaginative research programmes.