First things first: here is the link to our group's Google map for those of you who would like to see it http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?vps=2&hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=214005049597555568959.0004b8900ded7fa7ea4ad.
Second order of business: here is the list of research questions that we came up with while in the field:
1. It appears that something has broken off the top of monument 5. What could this have been?
2. Why do you think there is so much variation in the monuments within this small section of the cemetery?
3. Notice the differences in the dates of the standing carved monuments (monuments 1, 3, and 14 -- family ones -- and graves 5 and 7 -- individual monuments) and the flat stones for individual burials (and even monument 6, which is standing but much simpler than the other standing ones, and has a similar date to the flat ones). What happened in this time gap of about 40 years that could have changed attitudes towards, and therefore practices surrounding, death and burial? Do you think these changes could simply be attributed to the passing of time?
4. For monument 1, the dates of the deaths of younger (under 20 years old) family members are close together (1884-5). Could something specific (e.g. disease, etc.) have happened to these individuals that could have caused their deaths to occur so close together?
5. What are the differences and similarities between the standing family monuments and the standing individual monuments? Why do you suppose these occurred?
6. Why do you suppose, within the individual graves with flat stones, that there are some that have their plot marked with stone boundaries (e.g. 9 and 10) and some that do not (e.g. 4 and 8)?
7. What did a typical Anglican family monument in the late 1800s look like?
Now, on to my own interpretations/analysis/answers to these questions. For the sake of brevity, my focus will be on questions 2, 3, and 4.
First, I will address question number 4:
Two babies, Edwin and Ernest Leigh, died three days apart (August 19 and 22) in 1884, 16-month-old Bernice died January 16 of that same year, and 16-year-old Agnes died March 23 of that year as well. The other death that was close in time to these occurred in 1885 and was of a 29-year-old, so I will actually separate this person and not group her (Edwina) in with the babies and Agnes. It's quite possible that these four young individuals -- Edwin, Ernest, Bernice, and Agens -- coincidentally all died within this short time frame. However, based on the time and the ages (relatively young) of these individuals, I am going to hypothesize that it was possible for them to have been killed by polio. The 1880s were a time when polio was still somewhat common, and young people were likelier to contract it. Of course, there are various other maladies that could have plagued these people, such as small pox; polio just seems to make the most sense to me in this case. It is also possible that perhaps there was some sort of genetic cause for their deaths (all members of the same family), but disease (polio in particular) seems like a likely culprit to me.
Next, I will address question number 3 (which really addresses number 2 as well...):
I will propose three reasons for the amount of variation seen between graves from different dates, individual graves -- standing and flat -- and family graves: fashion through time, war, and economics.
The earlier graves coincide with the later portion of the Victorian era. None of the standing monuments are particularly elaborate or carved intricately, and the carving present is relatively simple and does not display any complex or highly decorative sculpting; the standing monuments include family monuments and individual ones. Seven standing individual monuments (two of which are very small and very simple, presumably in the memory of children), four flat individual monuments, and three standing family monuments are present in this set. Only one standing individual monument occurs after 1890 (this is monument 6), but this monument is contained within a family plot so can be seen as an exception to the pattern that, eventually, individual monuments are generally only flat.
Because the monuments we chose are within the Anglican portion of Ross Bay Cemetery, I will use Cannon's "The Historical Dimension in Mortuary Expressions of Status and Sentiment" (1989) and its study of Victorian - Modern English mortuary displays as a guide for my analysis of the monuments dedicated to those that died from ca. 1880-1910. I am going to guess that these family monuments and the contemporary individual ones were the result of the fashions of the times. Cannon's evaluation of status as expressed in grave monuments -- that the wealthy, during the later Victorian era, reduced the amount of ostentation present in their funerary monuments after a period of high elaboration as a way to distinguish themselves from the lower classes and that the lower echelons of society followed suit and opted for simpler monuments themselves -- leads me to believe that the carved yet simple monuments (family and individual) are the result of lower class mimicry of the rich. The area of the cemetery we chose did not seem like it was occupied by once-wealthy dead that set the trends (as there were areas within view that looked, let's say, more polished) but rather by the ordinary folk that emulated their economically higher counterparts.
These monuments follow some of the general patterns noted by Cannon, such as the tendency for the amount of variety in monument shapes to decline during the latter half of the 19th century. If you look at the three family monuments, they are almost indistinguishable from one another. I think this actually had to do with the fact that each monument was created by the same carver. If we look to Cannon's Fig. 1 (p. 440) and Figure 2 (p. 441), we see that, in terms of monument shape/style, all the monuments from this time period (ca. 1880-1910) in our set fit in with general Victorian English patterns, where shape diversity declines from a peak in the mid-19th century but was still relatively high compared to, say, the first quarter of the century. There is definitely a higher diversity in monument shapes among monuments from this 30-year period than the later monuments that we looked at, which followed the pattern of decline in variety. These patterns explain why standing family monuments, standing individual monuments, carved flat individual monuments, and simple individual monuments all coexist over this time period in this section of the cemetery.
For the later monuments (of the 1920s-30s), two are flat and all are individual while monument number 6, also individual, is standing. The exception that number 6 represents can, I believe, be explained by the fact that it was added to a family plot. I assume that it is a standing monument at a time of almost exclusively flat monuments because (yes, we only have 3 monuments from this time, but from looking at other monuments in the same area it seemed as though the simple, flat monuments were quite common at this time), had it been flat and added to the middle of this family plot, it would have looked odd and been displeasing aesthetically. The rest of the monuments from this time are all simple, flat and small. This can perhaps be explained through the normal progression mortuary fashion (as Cannon there was a general trend of increasing simplicity), but I am going to suppose that the stark simplicity of these monuments can be attributed more, but not exclusively, to changes in mortuary display due to the Great War and possibly event he Great Depression.
As we can conclude from Garazhian and Papoli Yazdi (2008), disasters can affect mortuary practices and monuments rather noticeably, and the first world war was indeed a disaster. It stands to reason, then, that it had an effect on mortuary display. It is frequently the conclusion of psychologists and sociologists (e.g. Field 2000) that exposure to mass and frequent death can cause those exposed to become somewhat desensitized to or detached from death, causing alterations in the population's overall attitude towards it. This alteration in attitudes would, more likely than not, be reflected in grave monuments. Field notes that wartime experience can cause a loss of religious belief, especially in those that engage in actual combat, and more acceptance to the fact of our own individual mortality. Loss of religious belief would explain the absence of any religious markers on all three monument in our set that are dated after the first world war (note that monument 6, marking one person that died in the 1920s and one that died in the 1930s, is within a family plot next to a monument from the 1880s that is shaped like a cross), and the simplicity of the flat monuments in particular can perhaps be explained by a desensitization to death resulting in a feeling of not being obligated to devote a lot to mortuary display. Another possibility is that, during the first world war, monuments became simple because of resource conservation and this continued after the war.
Economics of the times may also be a factor in the simplicity of these monuments, but this seems less likely because 2 of the 3 monuments from this time were created for people who died in the 1920s, before the Great Depression hit (so during a time of relative economic prosperity). However, they may reflect the economic status of either the people they are dedicated to or the people who did the dedicating.
References
Cannon, A., 1989. The historical dimension in mortuary expressions of status and sentiment. Current Anthropology, 30(4), pp. 437-58.
Field, D., 2000. Older people's attitudes towards death in England. Mortality, 5(3), pp. 277-97.
Garazhian, O. and L. Papoli Yazdi, 2008. Mortuary practices in Bam after the earthquake. Journal of Social Archaeology, 8(1), pp. 94-112.
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