Reading Tombstones

Spending hours in Ross Bay Cemetery during my time off may not be everyone's idea of a good Reading Break, but I certainly found it both interesting and enjoyable!

Having grown up in Victoria, I have spent a lot of time around the graves in that cemetery, but I've never explored it in the way I did for this class. Even when I took a tour there in the past, I didn't look at the stones quite the same way.

My group originally intended to examine some of the oldest graves compared to the newest graves in a few given sections, then compare the changes in style. However, after spending almost an hour wandering the Roman Catholic section in the cold and wet, we realized that data set would be harder to attain than we thought. Unfortunately the proposed Row Marker System the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria is setting up has not yet been completed, and was therefor completely unhelpful to us. 

Having reached the conclusion that our original idea was not going to work, and since our feet were already soaking wet, we decided to visit some of the famous people buried in Ross Bay for inspiration! Thus we set to wandering through looking for monuments for people such Isabella Ross, the woman who owned the land where Ross Bay now stands (Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria, 2012),and other prominent historical figures.(Amusingly we struggled to find Emily Carr's monument, although we both noticed the one with all the paintings....)Whilst we were meandering through the various sections searching for some specific monuments, we noticed that many gravestones caught our eyes more than others. 

Thanks backpocketcoo.com!

Then we started to wonder why these certain graves stood out more than the others in the area. Not all of them were the largest, or the flashiest, or the most unusually shaped; yet they all possessed some quality that made them different from the rest. Thus our research question was born:

What qualities make a monument unique?

Furthermore, we were interested in whether there are certain patterns through time? And what motivates a family to choose a specific style for the monument? Did they know the result would stand out among the rest? 

View A Selection of Unique Graves in Ross Bay Cemetery in a larger map

Setting out to select monuments to photograph and map, we took a number of factors into consideration:

Firstly: Were we visually drawn to the monument?

This was important in our selection process, yet we did not define "visually prominent" as a matter of size. Rather we selected gravestones which did not fit in with the surrounding monuments. In some areas, large, projecting, stylized gravemarkers were not uncommon, so in order to stand out something else must be done to catch our attention, as in the Charles Moss marker...

Charles Moss The imposing black
wrought iron fence made this obelisk
more prominent than the others in the area.

Secondly: Was there something unusual about the inscription on the monument?

For example, the Schultz and Sims monument was not only visually prominent, but interesting in that it was dedicated to two individuals-one of which appears to have been an infant child. Furthermore, despite the fact that the more recent interment was in 1987, the grave appears to be regularly maintained. These elements set this grave apart from many others and lead us to include it in the data set, despite initial inclination to leave it out regardless of its imposing size and unusual design. 

Schultz and Sims The size and unusual shape,
plus the different type of plant seen here
made this monument stand out. Yet the dedications
were the reason we ultimately selected this marker.

Thirdly: Was the monument physically different from others of a similar burial type?
We were interested in asking this question in particular due to the differences we perceived in child graves. Three (four if the Schultz and Sims double burial is included) of our selections belong to children, yet they are all very different styles. Whilst they also come from different time periods, we found the variation in monument style particularly interesting.  

D.B. Campbell Despite its age
this monument has been repaired and
maintained fairly well. 

Verna M. This little marker was
not associated with any other family
burials and appeared very weather worn.

William Rhys Henderson-Van Rhyn
Teddy bears and small, maintained
garden make this child grave stand-out.

Selecting the eleven monuments that we did was not difficult; however, it was not particularly scientific either. I believe this could be an interesting question to pursue in other large and unregulated cemeteries if more stringent guidelines for a "unique" monument were set out. Although I do feel that given the scope of this project, we did a fairly good job of selecting monuments based on reasonable guidelines. 


If it were possible to attain the history of all the markers in the Ross Bay Cemetery, it would be interesting to compare the monuments we selected with all the others across given time periods, age of death, religious denomination, ethnicity, and other variables. Even more interesting would be to question the families who selected the monuments and discover what the intention behind their stylization of particular gravestones was. Did they want visitors to be drawn to the grave of a loved one? Were they trying to express some aspect of their relative's life? Or was the stonecutter simply looking to make a name for themselves with an interesting gravestone? 

Bermarija, a Croatian couple. 

It would also be interesting to know how cultural background affects burial choices. For example, the joint Bermarija burial was very interesting and stood out from everything in the adjoining sections. But it had photos of the deceased, which we learned in the article about burial practices in Bam (Garazhian and Papoliyazdi, 2008) sometimes comes in and out of style in a particular region. 

References: 

Garazhian, O. and Papoliyazdi, L., 2008. Mortuary practices in Bam after the earthquake, Journal of Social Archaeology [online]. Available at: http://jsa.sagepub.com/content/8/1/94.full. pdf+html [Accessed January 10, 2012]. 

Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria, 2012. Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria. [Online] Available at http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/ [accessed February 1, 2012]

Books and Bones, Bones and Books

As you, my devoted followers, may have noticed: I like books. 

I am what some people might call a "book person", or a "bibliophile" if you will.

This love of books is in fact one of my favourite qualities about myself.

However, it does get me into trouble when it comes to my time management.

Being a book lover is a very, very consuming passion.

And let me tell you, working in a book store definitely doesn't help!

Especially when the Anthropology section is on the floor I work on...

Due to that, I spend a lot of time "shelving" and "tidying" (ie. scoping out interesting books I'd like to eventually read) in the Anthro section, and there is one book I've gone back to time and time again. This book is called "The Bone Woman" and is by Clea Koff.

Thanks Bookmanager.com!

Have you ever spotted an item while you were shopping (shoes, a shirt, a picture/poster) and wanted it, but not bought it at the time? Maybe you were in a rush, or maybe you couldn't make up your mind. Either way, you leave. And then you think about it. All. The. Time. Then, rather than going and purchasing said item, you go and visit it. That's right, visit. Even though you know actually buying it would make you very happy.

That is what I do with this book. I'll take it off the shelf and flip through it occasionally, I even put it on hold once, but I have yet to actually go through with the purchase.

Then last week I was looking through Erin's blog, and I read her most recent post. In it she mentions The Bone Woman, and I think this is the final push I need to go into work and actually buy myself a copy!

Thinking about The Bone Woman always makes me think about another book that I have been visiting with for years:

Thanks Bookmanager.com!

These two books deal with different sides of the same coin. First you have Romeo Dallaire's well known account of his role in the atrocities which unfolded in the Rwanadian genocide. Then comes The Bone Woman, in which Koff, a 23 year old forensic anthropologist from the USA, is sent to Rwanada to work unearthing mass graves on a team for the United Nations.

Neither of these books are light reads, and I suppose this is part of why I have yet to purchase them. Not that I have difficulty reading about death (even gruesome death) in general. As I pointed out in my first post Dead Men Do Tell Tales is one of my favourite books! (On a side note, the only portion of that book that got to me was the description of the crematorium and cremation process- weird no?).
 
But something about mass graves really, really gets to me. I think it is to do with the senseless disregard for human life on such a huge scale, and the fact that the bodies are then literally dumped into a pit like garbage. I find the thought of even a murderer who brutally kills someone and then hides the body under a floor or in the forest to be somehow better, because they at least recognizes that the body is important enough to hide. Mass graves just feel to me like a lazy garbage disposal system. 

Thanks visualphotos.com

I think that work such as Clea Koff does is absolutely amazing. Giving personhood back to a jumbled pile of bones, and bringing some sense of rest to the families of the victims is an incredible vocation. I also find it really interesting (and wonderful) that the United Nations places such high importance on sending teams into places like Rwanda and Bosnia and Croatia to identify bodies of victims. The fact that the organization which strives to attain World peace is willing to spend time and money on returning remains to families is really special in my mind. And it speaks to the importance of funerary rituals in general that such projects exist.