Family Cemetery Research Articles

Memory Politics of Mass Graves and Commemoration: Korea’s Cheju April 3rd Incident

This article enquires into questions of state violence, cultural trauma, commemoration, and memory politics with respect to the Cheju April 3rd Incident or “the 4.3” (1947-1954), which is regarded as the precursor of the Korean War. After the Special Law for Investigation of the Truth about the Cheju April 3 Incident was established in 2000 by the government, “the 4.3” was officially recognized as a case of state violence and civilian massacres. Due to long-term enforced silence and suppression of “the 4.3 memory,” however, the divergence between state memory and local individuated memory has created conflict over the identity of the victims of mass killing, the commemoration of the event, and the complex politics of postmemory. Drawing on Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” (the type of inter-generational memory that mediates the past memory in its affective force), this paper explores the way in which this divergence is mediated in commemoration rituals of ancestor worship and reburial of dead bodies exhumed from mass graves. As material evidence of mass killing and its affective presence, the remains “animate” political action for moral judgement about responsibility for massacres. Placing the dead in a proper family tomb or public enshrinement hall shared with other mass dead in the 4.3 Peace Park becomes the most significant concerns of the bereaved families. It shows how state involvement in the management of remains and ancestral veneration custom continues to exert an influence on the surviving families of the dead as well as the victims of the 4.3. In opposition to the structural state intervention, there persisted a community action that continually repaired the loss of social relations and restored communal history through creating the children’s collective grave and family cemetery and inventing island-wide shamanic rituals in the public sphere. In this article, we witness the community of death and loss, which is newly formed through cultural trauma and restorative justice in the post-atrocity era.

Tang dynasty Tuyuhun royal tombs in Wuwei, Gansu

Abstract In 2019, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other institutions excavated the tomb of Murong Zhi, the King Xi of Tuyuhun, located at Chashan Village, Qilian Town, Tianzhu County. A comprehensive archaeological survey of the Binggou and Dashui river valleys in Qilian Town in 2020 revealed the existence of 23 Tuyuhun royal tombs across four areas. Three tombs at the Changling-Machangtan area in Qilian Town, excavated in 2021, are identified as a probable section of the Tuyuhun Pengzi clan’s family cemetery during the Tang dynasty. Through ongoing archaeological work, three large mausoleum areas have been confirmed in Wuwei’s Nanshan district: Yanghui Valley, Great Khan Mausoleum, and Baiyang Mountain. The tomb distribution is characterized by being widely dispersed but mutually connected. Excavations also confirm that Tuyuhun tombs were constructed without aboveground mounds. Additionally, rare Tang artifacts were discovered.

Курган бронзового века Калиновский II. Археологические и антропологические аспекты исследования

The Paper presents publication and analysis of the burial materials from excavations of a detached kurgan Kalinovsky II located in the central part of the Volga-Don interfluve near the eastern outskirts of the Kalinovsky farm of the Frolovsky district of the Volgograd region. The kurgan under consideration is located on the southern Archeda steppe riverside terrace of the left confluent of the Medveditsa River belonging to the Don River basin. The excavations were carried out in 2022 by the expedition of the Volgograd State University. In the course of the excavations, it was found that the archeological site was a kurgan-cemetery which had functioned for a long time. It contained 20 burials of an extended chronological period from the Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. This study examines burial complexes of the Bronze Age from archaeological and anthropological perspectives and is based on the materials from 12 burials. The main burial No. 14 can be attributed to the late stage of the Early Bronze Age within the boundaries of the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. The Middle Bronze Age is represented by 9 inlet burials belonging to the Middle Don Catacomb culture. Two burials No. 2 and 19, located in the lateral part of the kurgan mound, were made in the Late Bronze Age in 19th-18th centuries BC. The paleoanthropological study data have shown that this kurgan is to be considered as a family cemetery for a group of individuals (mainly children) belonging to the Middle Don Catacomb culture. The signs of deliberate artificial deformation in most of the children may indicate selectivity and belonging of this complex to a particular group with a special social status. In all probability, most of the children buried in the kurgan died as a result of stress caused by a long period of hunger, possibly in winter or early spring seasons. For adults, regardless of cultural affiliation, the typical diet was based on viscous food rich in proteins, as indicated by a specific pathological complex (absence of caries and abscesses, presence of tartar, periodontal disease and interproximal grooves). Exostosis of the external auditory canal was identified in a Pokrovsk time individual from burial 19 which might have been caused by his professional activity associated with a long stay in a cold wind or water environment.

Critical Race Theory: Counter-Storytelling the Case of ‘Old Frank’ and the Daniel Family Cemetery

The Texas Historical Commission (“THC”), a legislatively enacted agency of the State of Texas, has erected and disseminated nearly 17,000 historical markers across the state’s vast 268,596 square miles and 254 counties with one express purpose: “To protect and preserve the state’s historic and prehistoric resources for the use, education, enjoyment, and economic benefit of present and future generations.” Unfortunately, the histories of both the United States and Texas are under siege. Politically charged and fear driven constituents have fully devoted their collective time, energy, and financial resources to destroying the perceived new boogeyman, Critical Race Theory (“CRT”). Since January 2021, all but six states have considered legislation concerning CRT in public schools. Currently, eighteen states, including Texas, have passed legislation banning CRT to eradicate altogether or offer a redacted historicity. Despite their intent, the THC, through its application and review processes, actively participates in erecting memorials that obscure aspects of Texas history, especially those pertaining to race and racism. Conversely, CRT advocates, through one of its key tenets of counter-storytelling, aim to reveal all history. The specific case of “Old Frank” illuminates the intersectionality between CRT, the State of Texas, and Southern Methodist University’s histories. Located two blocks north of the campus in University Park, Texas, “Old Frank,” a family slave, inaugurated The Daniel Family Cemetery in 1850 and has been buried there with other “unknown” slaves in unmarked graves for nearly two centuries. “Old Frank’s” untold or “undertold” story both illuminate CRT’s necessity and stymies the THC’s ability to fulfill its motto of “Real Places Telling Real Stories.”

The Morphology of Cemeteries of Abandoned Villages in the Polish Part of Former East Prussia: Boundaries and Spatial Forms of Burial Grounds

The article discusses selected issues concerning the morphology of cemeteries of completely depopulated rural settlement units located in the part of East Prussia that was incorporated into Poland in 1945. The boundaries and spatial forms of the cemeteries were analysed and interpreted. These are actually the best-preserved components of the landscape of these historical burial places. The basic source material used in the study for the identification and preliminary analysis of the boundaries and shapes of the cemeteries were the sheets of the Topographische Karte Messtischblatt map from the 1920s–1940s and orthophotomaps showing the current land cover. Detailed analyses were performed using altitude measurement data from airborne laser scanning (resource of the Central Office of Geodesy and Cartography). The research results show clear differences in the size and shape of cemeteries belonging to specific types of settlement units. The preserved relics testify to the different ways of organising burial places at single-manor estates, where family cemeteries functioned, and those established in villages. The results of the analysis also indicate the characteristic features of the contemporary landscape of former Evangelical cemeteries, facilitating their field identification.

WESTERN HAN NOBLE BURIALS: A VIEW FROM ZHANG ANSHI'S 張安世 TOMB

AbstractThe family cemetery of Zhang Anshi was the first cemetery for nobles to be discovered in which the tomb occupants, dating, and gravesite orientation was so clear to investigators. As such, the site is of enormous historical significance. This essay introduces the entire site to readers and extrapolates aspects of the Western Han mourning regulations from the evidence presented by the jade suits, carriage and horse sets, tomb figurines, shrine, and layout. The essay also assesses scholarly debates concerning the degree to which Zhang Anshi's burial conforms to standards of late Western Han, and the relationship between Emperor Xuan's burial site and Duling with the site of Zhang Anshi's own tomb, questioning the traditional beliefs about “accompanying burials.”

The Salt Lake City Asylum and Hospital, 1870–1886: Mental Illness in Early Utah

The Salt Lake City Asylum and Hospital, 1870–1886: Mental Illness in Early Utah

Родоплеменные отношения – пережиток или реальность?

The article sets the task of identifying the features of the tribal structure, tribal relations among the Karakalpaks and their manifestations in the everyday culture of the people. Among the Karakalpaks, tribal communities are called ury. The generic structure itself is a complex hierarchy. The clans are united into two large arys – konyrat and on tort ury. Each of the arys is divided into urў, urў into tiira. In turn, tiire is divided into koshe. Each family group has its own name. The meaning of uraў is manifested in social and family life, in particular, in marital relations, when marriage is regulated by belonging to a certain genus. Karakalpaks in most cases marry between persons who are not related – uryўlas, that is, who are not relatives. The role of the ury is manifested in family relations. Most people retain family ties, regardless of the generation in which they intersect, and try not to interrupt communication with representatives of their kind. The idea of a common origin is very important for them, it serves to preserve the common genus. Preservation of family ties is the custom of appointing muryndyk ata and ene for newlyweds. Family unity is observed in funeral rites. Until the present time, the tradition of burying the deceased in the family cemetery has been preserved and relatives strictly adhere to it. It is not uncommon that the deceased is brought from afar for that. The previously existing principle of settlement according to tribal affiliation has lost its significance in modern conditions.

The Branches that Bind

The Branches that Bind

ОБ ИСТОРИИ И ПАМЯТНИКАХ СЕЛЕНИЙ АБУКОВЫХ ВТОРОЙ ПОЛОВИНЫ XVIII – НАЧАЛА XX В.

In the preface of the article authors consider main sources of information and scientific literature devoted to history Abukov family settlements. Also the features of the research approach are revealed. The following is brief information about the two Abukov family settlements in the upper reaches of the river Podkumok and, besides, Abukov family settlements on Kuban and Zolka rivers. Also description includes some biographical information of the most prominent representatives of the Abukov family. Some information about Abukov family cemeteries is given. Together with the information of a geographical, historical and necropolistic nature, the authors of the article review or mention some archaeological monuments located in the vicinity of the Abukov family settlements. For example, ancient settlement Ullu-Dorbunla, fragments of ancient and medieval roads, etc. In conclusion, the authors of this work talk about the special status of the Abukov family in the policy pursued by the local Russian authorities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which allows us to consider this family and the population dependent on it as a subethnosocial group of the Kabardian people that existed in the past.

Effect of land use changes on soil microbial enzymatic activity and soil microbial community composition on Maryland's Eastern Shore

We compared microbial enzymatic activity and community composition in small, undisturbed, family cemetery soils and surrounding agricultural fields or suburban lawns to determine the effect of land use changes on soil biology. We collected soil from seven sites in Wicomico County, Maryland monthly for one year. Fluorescein diacetate (FDA) hydrolysis and dehydrogenase activity were significantly greater in the cemetery soils compared to field soils (agricultural and lawn) 63% and 30% of the time, respectively. Much less frequently the field soils had significantly higher microbial activity compared to the cemetery soils (10% of sample pairs for both FDA and dehydrogenase). FDA activity measurements were highest in the spring and lowest in late summer at all seven sites, while no seasonal variation was evident for dehydrogenase activity. Dominant bacterial phyla in the soils were similar between field and cemetery sites with the exception of Gemmatimonadetes having higher relative abundance in fields. Fourteen genera differed in relative abundance between cemeteries and fields, and the relative abundance of these genera correlated with soil pH, organic matter, and phosphorus levels. There was no difference in phylotype richness or diversity between fields and cemetery soils. Based on FDA hydrolysis, microbial activity is greater in cemetery soils, providing evidence to suggest land use changes have altered the biological properties of these soils.

Marcas espaciais da paisagem rural: as rugosidades de Cachoeira do Sul/RS

A pesquisa objetivou identificar no espaço e tempo a constituição das rugosidades na paisagem rural do município de Cachoeira do Sul/RS. Para a realização da investigação, utilizaram-se os aportes metodológicos baseados no Materialismo Histórico, no método dialético e na abordagem qualitativa. As rugosidades são o que fica do passado como forma, paisagem, como espaço construído, possibilitam compreender o espaço como produto da ação humana, ao longo da sua história. Foram elencadas três tipologias de rugosidades no município: as rugosidades do Sistema de Circulação de Mercadorias e Pessoas (as pontes, viação férrea, porto, balsas, posto telefônico, posto de combustível e correio); as rugosidades do Sistema de Produção (as estâncias, fazendas, engenhos, charqueada, banheiro de imersão bovino e venda); e o Sistema de Interação Social (as casas antigas, escolas, igrejas, salão de baile, taperas e cemitérios familiares). As rugosidades devem ser entendidas como meios que possibilitam ressignificações e não como entraves ao desenvolvimento socioeconômico do lugar. A sua presença concreta valoriza o espaço e sua ressignificação possibilita aos grupos sociais do presente novas fontes de renda, de permanência no meio rural, contribuindo tanto para sua produção e reprodução como também para preservar do esquecimento e salvaguardar na memória as rugosidades.

Current Research: Selected Historic Caddo Allen Phase Vessels from the Deshazo Site (41NA13/27) on Bayou Loco, Nacogdoches County, Texas

Continuing with the on-going study of ancestral Caddo ceramic vessels from East Texas Caddo sites, I document three ceramic vessels and a fourth ceramic vessel section from excavations at the Deshazo site (41NA13/27) by The University of Texas at Austin (UT) in 1975-1976. The Deshazo site is the best studied Allen phase settlement in East Texas, and the archaeological investigations there indicates it was a small centralized hamlet of an affiliated group with a series of circular structures and an associated household or family cemetery. Most sites of the Allen phase were apparently occupied for only short periods of time, perhaps an average of 20 to 40 years, based on an analysis of structure rebuilding episodes at the Deshazo site.

Arkansan Odysseus

Arkansan Odysseus Rick Campbell (bio) Emergency Instructions Michael Gills Raw Dog Screaming Press www.rawdogscreaming.com 214 Pages; Print, $14.95 Readers familiar with Michael Gills' body of work and the chronicles of Joey Harvell know that he leads a tough life and struggles mightily to do the right thing with the hand that life deals him. His family has faced violence for generations—inflicted on them and by them. When a stranger insults Joey at the Stepwell family cemetery, Joey thinks, once I would have done harm to this man; his mother's brother, Earl, would have "pulled a pistol from his boot and shot the son of a bitch in the head." Though in this incident Joey remains calm, Arkansas and "the summer of death" doesn't bode well for him and his family. But as Joey says—we are survivors. Emergency Instructions is the first volume in the Go Love quartet; it presents the Harvells in a time prior to Go Love (2011) when they are grieving the death of Joey's mother. In Emergency Instructions, Joey is coming back to the land of his birth, and he feels triumphant; he's on the verge of becoming the man he wants, hopes, to be. We meet Joey driving from Salt Lake City with his family's belongings crammed in his truck and a vacuum cleaner hanging out the window. When Joey reaches his home stretch he cruises down Highway 71 and recounts to himself bits of his and his family's history and the story of how he met and fell in love with Renee. He exits the highway at Carrion Crow Mountain: read this as an omen. Michael Gills deftly weaves three narrative tracks, Joey's, his wife, Renee's, and a third character, Edgar T. Paris's, into a path that merges at the novel's end. Joey has just taken a job as a professor at Arkansas Tech; his focus area is Mormon conflicts with Arkansans. To the outside world this sounds a bit narrow and maybe specious as well. But where the Harvells have landed history is not forgotten; the massacre of Arkansas travelers trying to cross the Utah territory in a wagon train is still something to be avenged. For Joey, the subject's personal too. His ancestors were among the slaughtered, and while living in Utah he saw their "bleached skulls displayed in plain sight at Brigham Young University." Compared to Gills' other work, Emergency Instructions may be more Renee's story than Joey's. She struggles to make sense of the life she finds herself living after Joey brings his family home (for him) to Arkansas. Renee Harvell is not coming home. When she finds herself living among serial killers, snake handlers, backwoods witchcraft, and those who believe with fervor that they are about to meet their God, she wonders why in the hell she let Joey bring her and her daughter back here. Besides her dismay at Arkansas culture, or the lack of it, Renee thinks she's dying of cancer. She's more than on edge. Her first night in her new hometown, she stays at a motel with a dry swimming pool and an emergency instruction manual on what to do when the local nuclear reactor melts down. What ensues after the Harvells come home is as bizarre as anything in an Flannery O'Connor novel. Edgar T. Paris, the third main character in the novel, is a caretaker. He digs graves for the newly dead, cooks, cleans, and maintains the Tri-County Coon Club. When Joey's invited to the Tri-County Coon Club to lecture on his specialty—this area's fevered longing for revenge, a man whose daughter has just been murdered by the local serial killer bites Joey's index finger off and then escapes into the bayou. Underlying this story of the Harvells' life is, as always in Gills work, the family history of the Stepwells. Joey Harvell often tells this history. He imagines ancestors rising from their graves and calling him to join them when he thinks the nuclear plant has melted down. When he thinks of his lecture...

The excavation of Yelü Hongli’s tomb in Beizhen City, Liaoning

Abstract In September through November 2015, Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other institutions excavated Yelü Hongli’s tomb of the Liao Dynasty. This was a large-scale brick-chamber tomb consisting of the passage, ventilation shafts, entrance, corridor and tomb chamber; albeit having been looted in early years, many grave goods including silver wares, bronzes, iron objects, porcelains, wooden objects, jades, stone implements were unearthed, as well as architectural components and stone epitaph, and wooden coffin and bier were also preserved. This tomb located in Han Derang’s family cemetery, which was a part of the attendant burials of the Xianling and Qianling Mausoleums of the Liao Dynasty, was a tomb with exact date and yielding rich artifacts, and this was rare in the elite burials of the late Liao Dynasty, so it is significantly meaningful for the study on the burial system of the Liao Dynasty.

EPIGRAPHIC DISKS AND HORSEMEN RELIEFS ON THE STELAS FROM THE FAMILY CEMETERY OF KAITAG RULERS

The paper presents some of the study results of the family cemetery of hereditary rulers of Kaitag, located in Qala-Quraysh. During several expeditions in 2017–2018, more than 40 stelas, dating XIV c. – 1803/04, were studied. Names of the deceased, dates of their death, and other historical information, as well as poems, religious sayings, prayers and Quran Ayat in Arabic are inscribed on them. The stelas are made with high craftsmanship, distinguished by the refinement of the ornament and the elegance of epigraphic ribbons. Each stela of the necropolis can be described as a work of art. Among other interesting finds there are ten epigraphic disks on the stelas of the XVI–XVIII c. They are carved on the backsides of the monuments, have common composition, ornament, and similar contents: prayers to Allah for mercy on Judgment day. The article also describes horsemen relief images on two stelas of the early XVIII c., as well as a false horseman, carved on the tombstone of the late XVI c. Compositional decision of the relief is such that the weapons and armor are located above the horse, creating an effect of the rider’s presence, although the rider himself is not there. If the image weren’t stained, it would be impossible to reveal that it is not a horseman. The effect of presence is achieved by different artistic techniques. Among them is the image of a moving horse.The introduction of stated elements of tombstone decoration into scientific circulation contributes to dating of monuments with identical decor, and revealing interregional connections in stone carving craft.

Dying of the Stranger's Disease: Yellow Fever, Narrative Space, and the Art of Exclusion in Absalom, Absalom!

Dying of the Stranger's Disease:Yellow Fever, Narrative Space, and the Art of Exclusion in Absalom, Absalom! Edward Clough (bio) Introduction: The Sutpen Cemetery At the physical, narrative, and thematic center of Absalom, Absalom!, in one of the novel's most memorable and vivid moments, Quentin Compson encounters the Sutpen family cemetery, seeking shelter when rain interrupts a quail hunt with his father. Later, as he recalls his impression at the beginning of a night's storytelling with his Harvard roommate Shreve, Quentin vividly visualizes those collected graves: the two flat heavy vaulted slabs, the other three headstones leaning a little awry, with here and there a carved letter or even an entire word momentary and legible in the faint light which the raindrops brought particle by particle into the gloom and released[.] (156) The imagery of light and dark, stasis and change, speaks resonantly to the novel's larger patterns of revelation and obfuscation, of things "momentary and legible." Moreover, in its correlation of narrative and burial plots, this image also materializes much of the novel's narrative space.1 This spatial-narrative analogy works precisely because these plots are visibly unequal. The hierarchies of life persist in death: it is the grand, vaulted slabs of Thomas Sutpen and his wife, cracked and worn but still "quite legible," that are physically and narratively approached first (156–57). And it is only subsequently that Quentin is compelled to brush back the heavy fall of cedar needles to make legible the inscription on the other, more faded [End Page 89] headstones, "leaning a little awry": of Charles Bon, Sutpen's spurned, and likely mixed-race, son (158); of Bon's own son, Charles Etienne de Saint Valery Bon (158); and of Sutpen's daughter, Judith, whose grave lies "at the opposite side of the enclosure, as far from the other four as the enclosure would permit" (174). The cemetery consolidates and reveals, in a single site and image, the Sutpen family's fatal history. It reveals, in particular, how Sutpen's plantation "design" (218) was doomed by the very exclusion of his firstborn mixed-race son, Bon, that he believed would ensure its preservation.2 Killed by his white half-brother Henry, in a tragic escalation of his father's earlier rejection, Bon rests in death beside the father who rejected him in life, with the dynastic plantation design shrunk down to a small plot of burial ground. Yet amidst this physical revelation, there is also mystery. Why are the graves of Bon, Charles Etienne, and Judith so deliberately differentiated from—and rendered so less legible than—those of Sutpen and his wife? And why, still more noticeably, is Judith's grave set apart from the others? This latter question is partially addressed by Quentin's wry observation that "whoever had buried Judith must have been afraid that the other dead would contract the disease from her" (174)—the disease in question being yellow fever. The observation is not intended literally: beyond the physical impossibility of post-mortem contraction, Quentin also knows—through recollection of his father's account immediately before this (173–74)—that Charles Etienne already had yellow fever, and that Judith contracted it while nursing him. A further question arises, then: why, if they died almost simultaneously, of the same disease, were Judith and Charles Etienne buried apart? To answer these questions is to uncover the submerged yet profound significance of sickness and yellow fever within Faulkner's novel as historical referents and narrative structures. "Cultural margins and national borders are often summoned, if not articulated, through the figure of specific contagious diseases," Wald, Tomes, and Lynch argue (3), and this is very much true of Southern yellow fever discourses. Known as yellow jack, vómito negro, and most significantly "the stranger's disease," yellow fever haunted the consciousness of the US South as both sickness and symbol (Carrigan 64). The swift and devastating effects of outbreaks—such as the 1878 summer epidemic, which claimed 20,000 lives in the Mississippi Valley (Humphreys, Yellow Fever 10)—along with yellow fever's historically unknown [End Page 90] origins and visually striking re-coloring of skin, helped the disease...

Consideration of the former Gen-ichi Toyama Residence (Toyama Memorial Museum) Garden with regards to the design features and the intrinsic value as a cultural property

This paper researches the former Gen-ichi Toyama Residence (Toyama Memorial Museum) Garden to define the composition, design and materials and discuss its value as a cultural property. The main discussion points are as follows; (1) Formality and Tradition: The garden has the family shrine in the north-east corner (Kimon), and the family cemetery in the south-west corner (Ura-kimon). The buildings were positioned around the northern area like flying gees (Gankougata), the main garden was designed in the southern area. (2) Totality of the composition: the garden has 6 areas, and they were positioned with buildings harmoniously. The composition has a spatial unity, physically and visually. (3) Modernity and sophistication: We can see general modern garden style features in the wide lawns and the curving streams. Additionally, the techniques of step stones in the stream, shore stones and artificial stone objects are sophisticated. (4) Continuance from the Showa period to the present: The sculptures and a museum from the late 20th century were located in the garden, the original garden form was kept well. These were the elements also seen in as the Toyama memorial museum garden. We can follow the history of the garden from the physical aspects.

Погребальная практика русского населения Тобольского Прииртышья в XVIII—XIX веках: случаи отступления от официального законодательства

The article deals with the issue of non-compliance with the legislation in the burial practice of the Russian population of the Tobolsk Irtysh region in the 18 th -19 th centuries. The archival materials of the Fund of the Tobolsk Spiritual Consistory of the State Archive in Tobolsk, reflecting the cases of deviation from the legally established practice of burial, are introduced into scientific circulation. The materials of records management on the facts of the death of a newborn child of the settler Ivan Minin in 1774, who died unbaptized, are analyzed, as well as the death and burial of the peasant Alexey Vakhrushev made without the consent of the civil authorities in 1815 in the territory of the Abalak Znamensky monastery. As a source for the reconstruction of the funeral rites of the Russian population of Siberia, the materials obtained as a result of archaeological research of two children’s burials from the Russian settlement “Yarkova village” in the Tobolsk Irtysh region are involved. Based on the analysis of the features of the burial rite, the burials are dated by the middle of the 19 th - early 20 th centuries. In connection with the absence of other burials nearby, it is concluded that these burials are a “home” (family) cemetery of unbaptized babies, located in the garden near the cliff, free from economic activity on the site of the peasant estate.

Forgotten Soldiers: Burials on the Texas Frontier and Shifting Perceptions of Military Interment

This research examines the interrelation between civilian and military burials on the Texas frontier in the 1850s with further discussion about the drivers for changing military burial practices. A soldier’s life on the Texas frontier is briefly outlined along with some of the difficulties facing service members living in border forts. Special focus is placed on examining the socio-economic differences between officers and enlisted personnel, as well as the recording of deaths on the frontier. As a case study, the condition of the proposed location of the Fort Gates cemetery is explored and brief analysis of data gathered from the site is presented. The condition of the Fort Gates location is then compared to the nearby Sheridan Family Cemetery. The paper concludes by exploring how the American Civil War shifted civilian perceptions about military dead, leading to increased care for the remains of these deceased soldiers. Primary field research was conducted in Coryell County, Texas around the former site of Fort Gates, on the Fort Hood military installation, and in Gatesville, Texas.