Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's those discount Halloween socks that you'll buy
Speaker 1: November first and then wear all year ali ward back
Speaker 1: with a spooktober October finale. That's honestly maybe gonna give
Speaker 1: me nightmares. I've already had recurring night terrors about grave
Speaker 1: sites and tombstones and cemeteries and burial grounds. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: howdy shaver me timbers. Now, Halloween doesn't get much more
Speaker 1: on the no's than this episode. Will it be goth?
Speaker 1: Will you be surprised? Will you never think about some
Speaker 1: things the same? Forever? All of those answers during this
Speaker 1: delightful discourse with an ologist who got her bachelor's in
Speaker 1: archaeology and a master's in historical archaeology, leading whole excavation
Speaker 1: team for months looking for lost burial grounds from the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. And she also does ongoing research on gravestone
Speaker 1: symbols and iconography and preserving historical burial sites. So this
Speaker 1: woman digs graves. Don't have plans for Halloween, don't worry,
Speaker 1: She's got you covered. But before we dig in quick
Speaker 1: Thanks to patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies for
Speaker 1: making the show possible. You can join them you can
Speaker 1: hop in there for a buck a month. My love
Speaker 1: is not expensive. And thanks to everyone who tells friends
Speaker 1: about the show and rates and tweets and grams and
Speaker 1: reviews of course, so I can snoop them each week
Speaker 1: and then Dad barrass you by reading a fresh one
Speaker 1: like this. Obix Benge wrote, Hey, pod Dad, that's me.
Speaker 1: I had to listen to every last episode just to
Speaker 1: be extra certain before rating ologies. Spoiler from Munkenology to
Speaker 1: Kinetic Saltaicidology, it's been a solid five stars. What am
Speaker 1: I supposed to do with the rest of my life
Speaker 1: now in between Tuesdays? Obix Bene, I don't know. Re listen,
Speaker 1: there you go and thank you. Also, okay tofology. Straight
Speaker 1: up Greek word here tafos means funeral or grave or tomb.
Speaker 1: So let's just get into this wonderful episode in which
Speaker 1: we discuss trap saying, past tombs, the ethics of headstone cleaning,
Speaker 1: picnics in the graveyard, poltergeists, Goths, the best epitaphs, coffins
Speaker 1: and caskets, Puritans, witch trials, cemeteries versus graveyards. Is their difference?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: And why you'll want to spend Halloween font spotting among
Speaker 1: the dead in an episode that I'll be honest, kind
Speaker 1: of fuck me up a little bit in terms of
Speaker 1: graveyard history, but I am richer for it. With archaeologist,
Speaker 1: tombstone conservator, scholar, and tafologist Robin S. Lacy. Okay, first thing,
Speaker 1: if you could pronounce your first and last name and
Speaker 1: your pronounce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Robin Lacy.
Speaker 1: She here awesome, Robin Lacy. Do you know that there
Speaker 1: is a word and its tafology is the study of graves?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, I've heard of that one you have.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this a commonly used word or is it
Speaker 1: pretty obscure?
Speaker 2: I see it a lot on like Instagram and stuff.
Speaker 2: People will describe themselves as like a taffa file, but
Speaker 2: I don't see it as much in like archaeology.
Speaker 1: I would imagine as an archaeologist, you would be more
Speaker 1: apt to describe yourself as a tafologist and a tapha file.
Speaker 1: You're not just tripping about a cemetery taking photos, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like that's half of my research,
Speaker 2: just stumbling around the gravestones. I would more just describe
Speaker 2: myself as an archaeologist though.
Speaker 1: Right would are you a goth. No, I'm straight up
Speaker 1: asked that question.
Speaker 2: No, I'm like the least a goss graveyard person.
Speaker 1: Basically, do you find that a lot of other archaeologists
Speaker 1: who work in the burial space, both figuratively and academically,
Speaker 1: do they tend to be more of the recreationally spooky
Speaker 1: or are they history and arts?
Speaker 2: I think definitely both. Everything we do in archaeology deals
Speaker 2: with basically deals with death. Everyone that we study, for
Speaker 2: the most part, unless you're dealing with the living community,
Speaker 2: everything that comes out of the ground is from someone
Speaker 2: who's already died. So even if you're doing archaeology and
Speaker 2: you're not even looking at burials per se, you're still
Speaker 2: in some way dealing with death as a theme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess archaeology is like one big est state sale,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like what they do with this?
Speaker 1: What kind of a person were they? What narrative can
Speaker 1: I try to understand based on these artifacts?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: How did you end up in this space? Are you
Speaker 1: from the Eastern Seaboard? Did you grow up around spooky cemeteries?
Speaker 2: So I'm from Halifax, Nova Scotia originally, but I grew
Speaker 2: up in BC. I wouldn't say, I grew up in cemeteries,
Speaker 2: but during like family trips and stuff, my family would
Speaker 2: always go to historic sites and if there was like
Speaker 2: someone really interesting buried or somewhere, or people told us that,
Speaker 2: like the monuments in a specific graveyard were very impressive,
Speaker 2: we would go look at them. So it's definitely like
Speaker 2: something I was comfortable going to and being interested in.
Speaker 2: But initially I wanted to do either maritime archaeology, which
Speaker 2: I know you talked about on the show before, or
Speaker 2: archaeology in meso America. And then I did a field
Speaker 2: school in my undergraduate degree through the University of Liverpool,
Speaker 2: and we were doing the surveys of graveyards in Ireland
Speaker 2: and it was like rainy and cold, and I sat
Speaker 2: down and we started recording like everybody's names on the stone,
Speaker 2: what styles headstones they were, and I was just like, well,
Speaker 2: I think this is where I'm gonna be for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I asked Robin if she ever listened to the Smiths
Speaker 1: cemetery gates like on repeat.
Speaker 3: So we go inside and were grave stones all those
Speaker 3: people below those lives were they know, oh the loves
Speaker 3: just back none they were born.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: Gone she was like, no, and I can't blame her.
Speaker 1: I listened to Morrissey before he crumbled before our very eyes,
Speaker 1: like ancient marble. So being sixteen watching her crushed smoke
Speaker 1: clothes and complain about his dad in a cemetery was
Speaker 1: not something that we had in common. That's fine. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of recreational graveyard hanging in my own
Speaker 1: particular youth, But straight off the gate. As someone who
Speaker 1: studies burial grounds, cemeteries, graveyards, are they a good place
Speaker 1: to picnic or is that very rude?
Speaker 2: It definitely depends on the site. I know that some
Speaker 2: larger sites like Mount Auburn and Cambridge don't let people
Speaker 2: do that just because it is such a significant historic site,
Speaker 2: and like you wouldn't go sit and have a picnic
Speaker 2: in downtown Boston, other like rural sites, if you're going
Speaker 2: there to visit family members, I think definitely you can
Speaker 2: have a picnic in a cemetery. I've known that when
Speaker 2: we're doing field work and graveyards, you are just going
Speaker 2: to eat your lunch there. It's in the Victorian period
Speaker 2: they would have they would go and have picnics and
Speaker 2: can go for walks and graveyards very regularly, so kind
Speaker 2: of doing it now is almost keeping in that tradition.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes me feel a little better because out
Speaker 1: here in LA we have the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which
Speaker 1: is like a straight up night life than you. Like,
Speaker 1: I saw a concert there a few weeks ago. They
Speaker 1: have screenings and so cool, right, But it seems like
Speaker 1: there's different schools of thoughts in terms of, hey, everyone
Speaker 1: buried here would have wanted to go to a party,
Speaker 1: so why not have a party. And this is very
Speaker 1: very you know, sacred holed ground. But how does it
Speaker 1: differ in different cultures, different parts of the world how
Speaker 1: we dispose of bodies. Is it a very Western thing
Speaker 1: to bury your whole skeleton and have like a plot
Speaker 1: of land or is that pretty worldwide?
Speaker 2: I mean definitely, everybody around the world has different burial
Speaker 2: customs and funerary customs and even ideas about what dying
Speaker 2: is and how it takes place when death happens. But
Speaker 2: it's definitely a very like North American idea that when
Speaker 2: you buy a plot of land and bury an entire
Speaker 2: body in it, that that is something that you own
Speaker 2: for all of eternity. Basically, we have so much space
Speaker 2: in North America, and this idea of burial and perpetuity
Speaker 2: and like your final resting place is sort of ingrained
Speaker 2: into how we see a funeral and how we see
Speaker 2: a burial space. But if you go to Luxembourg or
Speaker 2: places in Europe that don't have as much space, the
Speaker 2: burial space for the body itself is something that's temporary,
Speaker 2: and after not too many years, like a decade or
Speaker 2: so or twenty thirty years, they'll ask the family if
Speaker 2: they want to renew basically a lease on that burial space,
Speaker 2: and often the families don't want to anymore, so like
Speaker 2: once the body's decomposed, they cremate them and then the
Speaker 2: remains are put in a sort of like a mass
Speaker 2: burial space for cremated remains.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that that makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: though it always seemed a little odd that were like,
Speaker 1: this is my plot of land, because if everyone did
Speaker 1: that for the last several million years, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any space that wasn't a graveyard.
Speaker 2: It seems exactly. I mean, I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of Europe there isn't a lot of space. It's not
Speaker 2: a grave yard. But yeah, it's very like a North
Speaker 2: American idea that that's a space you get to own,
Speaker 2: or your corpse gets to own for hundreds of years
Speaker 2: after you're no longer there.
Speaker 4: M h.
Speaker 1: And what's the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery
Speaker 1: and a burial ground? Walk me through literally trapes me
Speaker 1: through some of these different plots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the terminology is like in some ways interchangeable
Speaker 2: depending on what country you're in. But in my research,
Speaker 2: a burial ground is a space that could like that
Speaker 2: term could be used interchangeably, like in seventeenth century New England,
Speaker 2: which is one of my study areas a burial ground,
Speaker 2: that term was used by Puritan settlers specifically to mean
Speaker 2: an unconsecrated space for burials, because that was something that
Speaker 2: they did. But if it's space for graves that is
Speaker 2: around a church, that would be the churchyard also the graveyard.
Speaker 2: Graveyards can also be not attached to the church but
Speaker 2: still directly associated with the church, whereas burial grounds and
Speaker 2: cemeteries are often like municipally owned. That's not always it's
Speaker 2: all murky. But cemeteries as a term is really interesting
Speaker 2: because a cemetery is sort of comes from this like
Speaker 2: rural garden burial space aesthetics, the rural garden cemetery movement,
Speaker 2: and that didn't come to North America until eighteen thirty
Speaker 2: one when Mount Auburn was constructed in Cambridge. So anything
Speaker 2: older than that it is technically not a cemetery in
Speaker 2: North America.
Speaker 1: Oh fun fact, I am sitting between Cambridge and Watertown
Speaker 1: outside of Boston. I just looked it up and I'm
Speaker 1: one mile away from Mount Auburn Cemetery and it's dark out,
Speaker 1: I'm not wearing pants, and the cemetery is closed. I'm
Speaker 1: in a hotel recording this right now. I leave Boston tomorrow
Speaker 1: and I'm a mile away from Mount Omborn Cemetery. There's
Speaker 1: five thousand trees there and ten miles of winding roads
Speaker 1: and bird watching. From what I gather, it is like
Speaker 1: the Disneyland of old Coool cemeteries. Even the word cemetery
Speaker 1: was a rebrand in this era and it means a
Speaker 1: sleeping place in Greek.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened in the eighteen thirties where suddenly there
Speaker 1: was this shift was were there like some bros that
Speaker 1: were like, We're here to disrupt the graveyard industry I.
Speaker 2: Feel like probably yes, you hear about like the changing
Speaker 2: ideas of death in America and in Canada as well.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of people being kind of freaked
Speaker 2: out about bodies after a while. Whereas you used to
Speaker 2: be buried a little bit closer to the areas that
Speaker 2: you were like living in, when those spaces got full,
Speaker 2: people got a little bit freaked out when they could
Speaker 2: smell the bodies. Sometimes these burial grounds and there were
Speaker 2: some in New York like this that got so overcrowded
Speaker 2: that you could smell the decomposition. Oho, and when people
Speaker 2: started getting sick, they were worried it was from with
Speaker 2: air quotes, the miasma coming from the bodies. So they
Speaker 2: were like, there are no more bodies allowed to be
Speaker 2: buried inside of New York City. Let's move the graves.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it was like this movement to sort of
Speaker 2: pastoralize I guess, the graveyards by making these more open,
Speaker 2: like beautiful airy spaces. But at the same time it
Speaker 2: came a little bit from people being scared of bodies.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So it was a little bit of a
Speaker 1: column a column bee like we just are honoring you,
Speaker 1: please turn into liquid and fungus elsewhere absolutely makes sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're getting your PhD right now. How did you
Speaker 1: narrow down your studies.
Speaker 2: With great difficulty? I'm going to say so I did
Speaker 2: my masters at the same school that I'm at right now,
Speaker 2: Memorial University of Newfoundlands and Lambrador. And for my masters,
Speaker 2: I was looking at sort of seventeenth century burial landscape development,
Speaker 2: as usually the short form of saying it, which is
Speaker 2: like how burial spaces were organized in communities, and then
Speaker 2: how that related to other communities, and if you can
Speaker 2: take that information and see if there were overarching trends
Speaker 2: like did everyone in the seventeenth century put all of
Speaker 2: their bodies in the center of town? And for my PhD,
Speaker 2: I was like what were other countries doing in North
Speaker 2: America at the time, because I'd only really looked at
Speaker 2: British sites at that point. But then also I was
Speaker 2: really interested in sort of looking at ways that these
Speaker 2: burial spaces that were established through colonialism, how you could
Speaker 2: see bodies represented in them that weren't just of white sellars,
Speaker 2: because that's sort of the narrative that we get fed
Speaker 2: that all the sellers were white, which they clearly weren't,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them were there against their will
Speaker 2: and being buried in spaces that weren't traditional to them.
Speaker 2: And how how visible that is m or not visible?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: What kinds of facts and history and narratives have you
Speaker 1: been learning about doing that.
Speaker 2: I've been doing a lot of reading on the African
Speaker 2: burial g found in New York City and the community
Speaker 2: archaeology that was sounded like a little mismanage at the beginning,
Speaker 2: and then they brought in a lot of community partners
Speaker 2: to make it the National Park site that it is today.
Speaker 1: Okay, this information is going to be rough, but it's
Speaker 1: terrible that more people don't know this. So thirty feet
Speaker 1: below Broadway in Manhattan, excavations uncovered a six acre burial
Speaker 1: plot with, according to the National Park Service, fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: intact skeletal remains of enslaved and free Africans who lived
Speaker 1: and worked in colonial New York dating from the sixteen
Speaker 1: thirties to seventeen ninety five. So, in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: the remains were sent to Howard University in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: To be examined by archaeology teams, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three they were reinterred in Manhattan in what was
Speaker 1: called a ceremonial cradle moving event. So the discovery rocked
Speaker 1: a lot of historical assumptions and it's caused historians to
Speaker 1: rethink their understanding of enslavement in the area. So it's
Speaker 1: a reminder of just how much history is covered up
Speaker 1: and buried in many cases quite literally.
Speaker 2: And so far it's been quite difficult to find any
Speaker 2: evidence from the seventeenth century, which is the time period
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in looking at showing black or indigenous
Speaker 2: people being buried in these spaces because a lot of
Speaker 2: times they didn't get grave markers, or they weren't the
Speaker 2: ones writing the records, so they're not the records we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how far back do a lot of records go?
Speaker 1: How were they even kept? Are there books that have
Speaker 1: survived in either municipal records or in churchyardyard records?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there definitely are books. It helps if people
Speaker 2: were wealthy and had the money to record things properly,
Speaker 2: Like there's a book that Samuel de Champlain wrote about
Speaker 2: his trips to North America. It's just called I think Voyages.
Speaker 1: So for those not well versed in their French colonists.
Speaker 1: Samuel D. Champlain was a French colonist. There you go.
Speaker 1: So he sailed across the Atlantic over or twenty times
Speaker 1: and founded Quebec. He was like Bocher, he's very cold.
Speaker 2: And from that we have maps of Quebec city and
Speaker 2: we have maps of an island called Saint Croix from
Speaker 2: like sixteen thirteen, so we know exactly where on that island.
Speaker 2: In particular, they had a graveyard and they had a church,
Speaker 2: which is amazing. And for other sites that I've worked on,
Speaker 2: we have no records all from the time period talking
Speaker 2: about that kind of thing, and yeah, if stuff survived
Speaker 2: well enough in perfect circumstances and or if the people
Speaker 2: were really important is often a good example of things
Speaker 2: that will have been kept from the seventeenth century, because
Speaker 2: that's four hundred years ago by this point. And one
Speaker 2: of my favorite documents is the diary of Samuel Seawall,
Speaker 2: who he was a judge and he was a participant
Speaker 2: in the witch trials as well. But he kept a
Speaker 2: diary from It's on my desk from sixteen seventy four
Speaker 2: to seventeen twenty nine. He wrote about like all the
Speaker 2: funerals he attended, which was like all of them apparently,
Speaker 2: because there's hundreds of records in there. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Wow. What were the funerals like back then?
Speaker 2: Well, Seawall was a Puritan, very very Puritan judge person,
Speaker 2: so he writes not too much detail. They didn't really
Speaker 2: have too much like pomp and ceremony in the earlier
Speaker 2: seventeenth century with that religion, so they would be like
Speaker 2: church bells, maybe people would like not even say a
Speaker 2: prayer over the coffin. And then that started to change,
Speaker 2: and you can tell in his writings that he doesn't
Speaker 2: like that very much, and he'll be like, talking about
Speaker 2: a coffin going in the ground, tod be like that
Speaker 2: one had a cross on it, and I've never seen
Speaker 2: that before. It's really funny, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I found a passage of this, hoping for some
Speaker 1: Darwin level emo laments, but rather it's stuff like October eleventh,
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety two. Went to the funeral of missus Sarah
Speaker 1: Oliver widow age seventy two years, buried in the New
Speaker 1: Burying Place, a very good, modest humble plane, liberal matron
Speaker 1: scarves and gloves. So I guess it was early October,
Speaker 1: just under the falling golden leaves of a graveyard. And
Speaker 1: you know he wanted to write like, holy shit is
Speaker 1: pumpkin weather y'all, but he was like scarves and gloves,
Speaker 1: keep it low key. Come on, When did coffins and
Speaker 1: caskets get more and more elaborate.
Speaker 2: That's not something that I study like specifically. I'm more
Speaker 2: of a landscape above the surface in that respect, But
Speaker 2: there are a lot of really interesting examples going back
Speaker 2: to like the sixteenth century of coffins. There's seventeenth century
Speaker 2: lead coffins that exist. I know. In the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: they started standardizing like coffin hardware, like the handles and
Speaker 2: the little like filigrees you could nail on the top
Speaker 2: to decorate it. There would be catalogs of them. So
Speaker 2: it definitely went from a period where not everyone could
Speaker 2: afford one, or they're even be a communal coffin that
Speaker 2: would open up and put a person in the grave
Speaker 2: and then they'd take this like store coffin. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: those there is like a parish coffin. It was amazing
Speaker 2: you could borrow it. But like as the seventeenth and
Speaker 2: eighteenth century happened, it became something that was more affordable
Speaker 2: for everyone. So you thought, start seeing a lot more
Speaker 2: like simple coffins or just like ornate coffins that have
Speaker 2: these objects on the outsides that are like mass produced.
Speaker 1: Basically okay, so some fun trivia caskets are four sided
Speaker 1: and square, think of like a banana loaf, and coffins
Speaker 1: are hexagonal and they fit your shoulders and then they
Speaker 1: taper the feet and they look like, ah, scary. So
Speaker 1: why the trend hopping? Well, the violence and all the
Speaker 1: bloodshed of the Civil War changed the way that the
Speaker 1: funeral businesses sold their goods. So embalming took off because
Speaker 1: soldiers' bodies needed to last the trip back home, and
Speaker 1: coffins were deemed kind of creepily body shaped. Suddenly people
Speaker 1: want to death to seem a little bit less deathy.
Speaker 1: Speaking of horrors, how old were you when you saw Poltergeist?
Speaker 2: I have never seen polter get.
Speaker 1: What how is that possible?
Speaker 2: I know, I don't like a horror movies. I'm a
Speaker 2: very I think odd person who studies great.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you know what it's about? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Robin. It's about a family in the
Speaker 1: suburbs who buys a house and then they find out
Speaker 1: that they didn't properly move the graveyard. Hence they get
Speaker 1: Poulter goosted hardcore excellent, Like, how much of your work
Speaker 1: deals with moving gravestones or moving cemeteries? How often do
Speaker 1: they just move the gravestones and not the bodies A.
Speaker 2: Lot of the time, Yeah, a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: If you weren't wealthy, your grave just stayed right there
Speaker 2: and they would just put some more dirt on top
Speaker 2: of it to sort of level out the gibbots in
Speaker 2: the ground. Often when you see records saying that they
Speaker 2: moved a graveyard, they just moved the headstones.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, the bodies, the bodies, and you only
Speaker 4: move that sounds move that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So that was from the film Poltergeist, co written
Speaker 1: by Steven Spielberg. And yes, tiny spoiler, but y'all have
Speaker 1: had thirty years to catch this flick, okay, so see
Speaker 1: it at your own risk. It's the worst. It's so scary. Also,
Speaker 1: they used real human skeletons in it, which the actors
Speaker 1: who were working with the skeletons didn't know until after.
Speaker 1: So zero out of ten do not like or support
Speaker 1: that practice. But yes, gravestones way easier to move than graves.
Speaker 1: No spoilers there, I mean.
Speaker 2: Because most of the time.
Speaker 1: So does that mean in certain parts of the world,
Speaker 1: particularly this newly colonized continent we call Merca, that as
Speaker 1: they were moving westward and maybe cities were getting more congested,
Speaker 1: they just built right on frickin' top of stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Do archaeologists ever Are they ever called to construction sites?
Speaker 1: Is like a big oopsie. Definitely a lot of bodies
Speaker 1: down here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like in commercial archaeology, if if there's a
Speaker 2: body found, we would get called for sure. That's not
Speaker 2: what the construction people want to hear. So there's sometimes
Speaker 2: you get stories of people like sort of cutting straight
Speaker 2: through graves, which is really unfortunate. But typically, like if
Speaker 2: a skull were to come out of a little bank
Speaker 2: of a ditch someone was digging with an excavator, everything
Speaker 2: would stop. The police would be called first, is usually
Speaker 2: what happens, to make sure it's not homicide, and if
Speaker 2: it's deemed to be archaela, then the archaeologist would be
Speaker 2: called in and we would excavate out and make sure
Speaker 2: everybody was out of there before any more construction happened.
Speaker 1: Wow. If whoever's running that excavator, I hope they, I
Speaker 1: don't know, burn some incense, get a lucky crystal, just
Speaker 1: to be like, hell, did everybody know that underneath Washington
Speaker 1: Square Park in Manhattan are twenty thousand unmoved bodies from
Speaker 1: what was once a potter's field or a graveyard for
Speaker 1: the impoverished. Nobody told me that. Nobody said anything. People
Speaker 1: were just like, we've got the best bagels, and no
Speaker 1: one can say shit about it because there are bodies
Speaker 1: under our feet in like every city and it's just staggering.
Speaker 1: And I guess there's nothing anyone can do. But I
Speaker 1: hope that those people turned into fungus and worms and
Speaker 1: frogs and leaves, and that their bones don't mind being
Speaker 1: underneath all those sex in the city shoots and New
Speaker 1: Yorkers being like, hey, I'm walking on your graves. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm from the West coast. So when I went back east,
Speaker 1: or if I've ever been to older cities where there
Speaker 1: are gravestones that are tilted and covered in moss, the
Speaker 1: one thing that really spooked me was this coffin sized
Speaker 1: depression in the ground that I feel like I didn't
Speaker 1: see so much on the west coast. Is that just
Speaker 1: the wooden box collapsing on itself. Is that what's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there'd be a number of things. The coffin falling
Speaker 2: it on itself definitely would cause some of the ground
Speaker 2: to slump down. A lot of it also could be
Speaker 2: from when they dug the grave, air gets mixed into
Speaker 2: the dirt, and when you put it back in the hole,
Speaker 2: as it sort of settles, it can definitely depress because
Speaker 2: you can never get quite all of it back in there.
Speaker 2: In more modern cemeteries, we don't see that same type
Speaker 2: of depression because there's all these rules about having concrete
Speaker 2: lined grave chef, which is basically a vault underground, and
Speaker 2: its purpose is nothing to do with the burial itself.
Speaker 2: It is literally so that we don't get drivets in
Speaker 2: the grass, so that lawnmowers can have an easier time.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I didn't know burial vaults were even
Speaker 1: a thing. So they put your casket in a concrete
Speaker 1: casket so that your casket doesn't leave a casket shaped depression,
Speaker 1: just double bagging your actual ass right into heaven.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: How have gravestones changed over the last several hundred years.
Speaker 1: I'm sure lawnmowers and John Deere mower tractors have changed
Speaker 1: the way that we mark our graves, right.
Speaker 2: They definitely have. They don't have old stones at all.
Speaker 2: So in the seventeenth century in North American settlements, and
Speaker 2: the oldest settlements in North America from the British were
Speaker 2: like Jamestown and Plymouth. And then in Canada we have
Speaker 2: Cupid's Plantation which was sixteen ten and Farlands from sixteen
Speaker 2: twenty one, and we see at Farryland examples of the
Speaker 2: oldest British gravestones in North America which were carved in
Speaker 2: the sixteen twenties on site from local slate, and they
Speaker 2: sort of reflect the style that was really common at
Speaker 2: the period in the UK, which is sort of like
Speaker 2: a curved top and like all capital letters. And then
Speaker 2: as you go through the seventeenth century into the eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: you see a lot of mortality symbols they're called, which
Speaker 2: is like the skull with the wings and the hour
Speaker 2: glass and that kind of imagery that sort of really
Speaker 2: projects this idea of like your mortality to you, which
Speaker 2: is exactly their point. They're supposed to remind the viewer
Speaker 2: who's standing in front of the grave that the person
Speaker 2: below them is dead and that they're going to die too,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they literally say that on them helpful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, live for today. I guess it's
Speaker 1: saying like get in a claire, you know, tell the
Speaker 1: neighbor you're in love with them, whatever.
Speaker 2: Those really famous epitaphs that have lines like as I
Speaker 2: am now, so shall you be kind of thing, which
Speaker 2: are nice and spooky for spooky season. But then it's
Speaker 2: sort of it's called like the softening of the ideas
Speaker 2: of death. So you see these like the skulls become
Speaker 2: sort of like cherubs, and sometimes they're like pictures of
Speaker 2: the deceased themselves kind of represented with wings, and that's
Speaker 2: supposed to be like the soul going to heaven, and
Speaker 2: you get like more plant life on there and basically
Speaker 2: less less morbid pictures. And then in the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: there's like willow trees and urns and the sort of romanticizing.
Speaker 1: I'm always so curious how long ago in Europe did
Speaker 1: they start using two stones.
Speaker 2: So I can really only answer this for the UK
Speaker 2: in Ireland, but the use of grave markers definitely goes back.
Speaker 2: I mean, what we think of as a gravestone today
Speaker 2: probably came around in like the sixteenth and seventeenth century,
Speaker 2: and it could have been earlier, but we don't really
Speaker 2: have too much evidence from before the Reformation when it
Speaker 2: changed from the Catholic to the Anglican Church, and lots
Speaker 2: of stuff was wrecked, basically the monasteries were all shut
Speaker 2: and smashed up, a lot of monuments were defaced and destroyed.
Speaker 2: So there isn't the idea that there could be older
Speaker 2: traditions of like what we expect to be a gravestone,
Speaker 2: But before that there were like they're called effigies, like
Speaker 2: a big carving of a person laying on the ground,
Speaker 2: a big slabs that date to the medieval period called
Speaker 2: ledgers that still exist today, and like larger monuments than crosses,
Speaker 2: and like gesturing as the shape of it, like a
Speaker 2: big mound burial and stuff. So it's definitely a tradition
Speaker 2: marking where and in every country, marking where a grape
Speaker 2: is is often quite common. But what we think of
Speaker 2: as a gravestone today is sort of like a sixteen
Speaker 2: seventeenth century thing, and of course.
Speaker 1: This varies according to era and religious rights and even
Speaker 1: soil temperature and composition, and some religious practices like Judaism,
Speaker 1: traditionally call for a simple wooden coffin or casket. Other
Speaker 1: rights forego the box and just go for a shroud.
Speaker 1: In some Islamic burials, the grave site is traditionally marked
Speaker 1: with a border so as to protect it for many
Speaker 1: foot tread and then. Unlike historical Islamic and Jewish death rituals,
Speaker 1: Hinduism typically involves cremation, although some sex favor burial and
Speaker 1: sometimes sitting upright in a meditation pose, which I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of a neat way to do it.
Speaker 1: Nobody asked me though, But this is all, of course
Speaker 1: incredibly general. But my point is death care varies by
Speaker 1: region and by history and by culture, and the more
Speaker 1: we appreciate the meaning and the intention behind the customs,
Speaker 1: maybe the more we'll just appreciate being on the flip
Speaker 1: side of the grass, as my dad says, just where
Speaker 1: we are today, just still living and breathing, making the
Speaker 1: most things, telling the people that we love that we
Speaker 1: love them. Now, before I start crying too much, let's
Speaker 1: change the topic to typology. Were there specific fonts that
Speaker 1: were just used or reserved for tombstones or was it
Speaker 1: really standard back in the day.
Speaker 2: I don't think any were reserved for the gravestunes themselves
Speaker 2: that they're There were booklets that gravestone carvers use to
Speaker 2: be like these are the scripts that I can do
Speaker 2: kind of thing, And once they started printing stuff like that,
Speaker 2: they were getting a little bit more standardized, and in
Speaker 2: what you would see on the gravestone, like when you
Speaker 2: see a script with saraffs on it, the way that
Speaker 2: they would carve these letters was a little bit similar
Speaker 2: to the way that you'd expect them to be written.
Speaker 1: So my wonderful friend Colin Perry of the Fanatology episode
Speaker 1: about Death and Dying also studied typography and she created
Speaker 1: her own font called Mausoleum, and she sells pens that
Speaker 1: say in that font, I don't have time for bullshit,
Speaker 1: because really none of us do. So Cole echoes her
Speaker 1: love of cemeteries, and she told me or text that
Speaker 1: when people visit a cemetery they often feel more present
Speaker 1: and thoughtful about life. So stroll through one and listen
Speaker 1: to a bird and enjoy the breeze, or get nerdy
Speaker 1: about San Serah lettering, And if you want to fall
Speaker 1: headfirst into a post mortem font hole, check out Monument
Speaker 1: Letteringcenter dot com, which studies and preserves monument typography so
Speaker 1: many type faces. It's a wealth of information on how
Speaker 1: type and lettering has evolved as our technology has. Also
Speaker 1: real sad that there's a cool cemeterium all away from
Speaker 1: you right now. And you know, when let's say colonizers
Speaker 1: go into a new place, are they doing anything in
Speaker 1: terms of indigenous burial grounds or practices, any adoptions of it,
Speaker 1: any kind of respectful hands off. Has your work uncovered
Speaker 1: anything about that intersection of colonists and indigenous burials.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say they were very respectful.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that was going to be my guest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of the time there'd be like
Speaker 2: missionaries going in and sort of trying to eradicate a
Speaker 2: lot of indigenous traditions in Labrador. The Moravian missionaries arrived
Speaker 2: in the seven seventeenth and eighteenth century, I believe, and
Speaker 2: they were sort of changing a lot of burial practices,
Speaker 2: and I don't believe they were adopting any of the
Speaker 2: indigenous practices themselves. There's a mission a Jesuit mission near
Speaker 2: Quebec City that was established specifically to christianize the Indigenous people,
Speaker 2: and they had within the palisade of their site a
Speaker 2: burial ground for converted Indigenous people, which is something I'm
Speaker 2: going to be looking at in more detail because that's
Speaker 2: a space that was separating them in depth and sort
Speaker 2: of like marking these people that that wasn't their burial
Speaker 2: tradition as a separate group now whether or not that's
Speaker 2: something they wanted.
Speaker 1: How is the techology community? Do you share resources or
Speaker 1: do you take rubbings? Do you take extensive photos? Are
Speaker 1: there databases where someone's looking for, Hey, I'm looking to
Speaker 1: find out a little bit more about this person or
Speaker 1: this site where you share information.
Speaker 2: Cemetery Twitter as we call it, is a really great community.
Speaker 2: I was like, one thing that COVID has been good
Speaker 2: for and the Internet has been good for overall, is
Speaker 2: networking online. Like a lot of people that study graveyard
Speaker 2: stuff aren't anywhere near me, so being able to connect
Speaker 2: with them over the internet has been great. So like
Speaker 2: people will be like, oh, I'm looking for other examples
Speaker 2: of this type of gravestone. But there's also databases like
Speaker 2: find a Grave and billion graves that are all online,
Speaker 2: and those are sort of like community driven uploading that
Speaker 2: we don't take rubbings. Rubbings are very bad for the
Speaker 2: conservation of historic stones.
Speaker 1: Oh, tell me more about I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it used to be super common. It was
Speaker 2: like something that people did all the time. But after
Speaker 2: a while, when you push on the stone that much,
Speaker 2: it is actually physically wearing away pieces of the stone,
Speaker 2: especially when it's something really soft and a couple hundred
Speaker 2: years old, like a marble or a limestone or a sandstone.
Speaker 2: There's an example in Sleepy Hollow, New York, at the
Speaker 2: old Dutch Reform Church. I think it's called the grave
Speaker 2: of Katerine vent Keel, who was possibly the inspiration for
Speaker 2: the character in the Sleepy Hollow book.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Her grave used to be pretty legible. It's sandstone, so
Speaker 2: people would go because it's possibly like this literary connection
Speaker 2: and take rubbings of it. And the state of the
Speaker 2: gravestone if you look it up now it is almost
Speaker 2: completely illegible, literally just from rubbings, which is really unfortunate.
Speaker 1: I had no.
Speaker 2: Idea, yeah, As I always encourage people to like understand
Speaker 2: that pushing on it couldn't do damage, and that's something
Speaker 2: we want to avoid, like going forward as a as
Speaker 2: a graveyard community.
Speaker 1: Now I have done or I had a rubbing done
Speaker 1: of an ancestor's gravestone that was hard to find for
Speaker 1: my dad. Do family members ever do like a one off?
Speaker 1: Is it kind of is it discouraged for really noteworthy
Speaker 1: touristy type of attractions or if you've got one of
Speaker 1: like a family member, is that okay?
Speaker 2: It's okay, already have it, of course, but I wouldn't recommend,
Speaker 2: like going forwards, that people do that for any gravestones.
Speaker 2: Some stones will weather much better than other ones. Like
Speaker 2: if the gravestone is granite, it's not going to be
Speaker 2: too much of an issue, but it's more for like
Speaker 2: these old historic ones. Pushing on marble headstones too hard
Speaker 2: can break them in half unfortunately, so doing a rubbing
Speaker 2: on it can do some significant damage, which sucks because
Speaker 2: I look really cool.
Speaker 1: Right Well, okay, in old cemeteries, how come a lot
Speaker 1: of the gravestones are like crooked teeth going every which way?
Speaker 1: Are they sinking into the ground? Are raccoons vandalizing them?
Speaker 1: What's happening?
Speaker 2: It would be much cuter. If it was a raccoon,
Speaker 2: I would love that. So some of them are literally
Speaker 2: sinking straight down. Some are because the coffin has collapsed
Speaker 2: or because the body has decomposed, the ground shifts, they
Speaker 2: start falling over. A lot of it depends on the
Speaker 2: style of gravestone as well. Where these older styles that
Speaker 2: went they were quite long, like what you see on
Speaker 2: the surface, goes down into the ground like two feet.
Speaker 2: I find those ones to hold up a lot better actually,
Speaker 2: and more modern styles will be like stuck in sort
Speaker 2: of a key we call it, like they go in
Speaker 2: a couple inches and it's just this little base. And
Speaker 2: those are often set on big blocks of concrete underground,
Speaker 2: and the problem with that is it's so heavy the
Speaker 2: dirt underneath it isn't going to support it forever, and
Speaker 2: then that starts to sink, and then the whole stone
Speaker 2: goes down, and then people like me have to come
Speaker 2: in and dig a gigantic lot of concrete out of
Speaker 2: the ground and replace it with something that's actually going
Speaker 2: to hold the gravestone up for more than like fifty years.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah. Have you ever been in a cemetery
Speaker 1: or graverard doing the work and just been at all
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by mortality or by history or by a particular
Speaker 1: person's story. Does the work ever get to on a
Speaker 1: personal level.
Speaker 2: Definitely. Sometimes. The first excavation I was involved with where
Speaker 2: we were exhooming human remains because there was a development
Speaker 2: going in. I had a dream that night about the
Speaker 2: skull that I had exzoomed that day, and that took
Speaker 2: a minute to like consider and stop and remember that
Speaker 2: these are people, and they have ancestors in the area probably,
Speaker 2: and that's like something you need to be really aware
Speaker 2: of when you're working with burials, for sure.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten creeped out at all? Or is
Speaker 1: it just purely science and history for you? Are you
Speaker 1: able to walk through a cemetery after dark and be like,
Speaker 1: it's just a place.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's just a place because it's something
Speaker 2: that like everybody is going to end up in a
Speaker 2: place like this, So to me, it feels like a
Speaker 2: really natural place to go hang out, I guess, but
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't walk through it after dark because I'm
Speaker 2: definitely a whim right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Same, Do you think you're going to be buried in
Speaker 1: a cemetery or do you want to be ashes, they
Speaker 1: get launched into space. Your plan, my plan.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing in elementary school, which really just tells
Speaker 2: you that this is exactly what kind of job I
Speaker 2: needed to be doing. Someone said that your ashes could
Speaker 2: be put in a concrete block and it could be
Speaker 2: put in the ocean to help grow coral reefs, and
Speaker 2: I thought that was the coolest idea ever. And I
Speaker 2: was like, I want to be in like a blue
Speaker 2: orb in the ocean, So I probably want to be cremated.
Speaker 2: And I keep telling my husband I want to be
Speaker 2: cremated in an open air pyre on a beach, but
Speaker 2: that is not legal, so I guess that's not going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 4: Think it.
Speaker 2: But there is a process called acquamation or alkaline hydrolysis,
Speaker 2: which is also known as water cremation, which is a
Speaker 2: little more environmentally friendly than fire cremation, and it is
Speaker 2: legal in a couple provinces and a couple of states now,
Speaker 2: so I think, like, that's probably the route I would
Speaker 2: want to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, I discussed this in the Santatology episode, but the
Speaker 1: TLDR short version too long didn't read of alkaline hydrolysis
Speaker 1: is a metal the cylindrical chamber is slashing full of
Speaker 1: warm water an alkaline lie and you you're in there too,
Speaker 1: and then you kind of dissolve into a syrupy liquid
Speaker 1: and then you get flushed down the sewer system, which
Speaker 1: is the same place your blood goes if you get embalmed, no, biggie,
Speaker 1: same place your burrito goes. Five minutes ago. It was
Speaker 1: part of your body. It's not a big deal. So
Speaker 1: after hydrolysis, some of your bones, though, might remain in
Speaker 1: the chamber, and then those are ground up into dust.
Speaker 1: So think of it as kind of like a final
Speaker 1: worm bath as you tuck into your eternal bedtime. Maybe
Speaker 1: grow some sea polyps on yourself after I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's your life, and by life I mean death. If
Speaker 1: you had a concrete block in the ocean, would you
Speaker 1: want it etched with like your name and like a
Speaker 1: pithy epitaph.
Speaker 2: I hadn't actually thought about that, but I feel like
Speaker 2: that would be an awesome idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just in case anyone ever for some
Speaker 1: reason is studying coral and they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is rob and lacys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, throwing that's awesome.
Speaker 1: How do you feel around Halloween when people set up
Speaker 1: prop graveyards on their lawns, does it ever make you
Speaker 1: do double takes? Like oh, what's that cemetery? And then
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, man, that's just the Robertson's front lawn.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love it, but I'll definitely be the
Speaker 2: person walking around being like that's not accurate.
Speaker 1: What kind of what is it? What's a Halloween amateur
Speaker 1: our mistake when we're putting up fake graveyards.
Speaker 2: Well, just like when it says like just rip across
Speaker 2: the stone or something, I'll be like that that would
Speaker 2: just be in the top, where like that would be
Speaker 2: only on the bottom. And I've actually seen very few
Speaker 2: gravestones that actually have rip on them. Really, I'm like
Speaker 2: it should say this other thing.
Speaker 1: What are some things that you've seen in historical maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit creepy tombstones.
Speaker 2: Anything that says like here lieth the body of or
Speaker 2: like beneath the stone lies the mortal remains. Anyone's like
Speaker 2: that or.
Speaker 1: My favorite, Yeah, that's already that's pretty dark and spooky.
Speaker 1: That immediately makes me think of a corpse for sure,
Speaker 1: But in the respectful way, is there a graveyard that
Speaker 1: you really really want to go to it's on your
Speaker 1: own bucket list.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I would love to go. I'm going to
Speaker 2: butcher the name because I don't know any French at all.
Speaker 2: I'm a terrible Canadian. Pierre Lechez. I think beer luses, Okay,
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Beer lush is.
Speaker 2: It's in Paris and it is technically the first garden
Speaker 2: cemetery in the world, and it's supposed to be amazing.
Speaker 2: Lots of important people are buried there, but it's like
Speaker 2: the start of the rural cemetery movement globally, so it'd
Speaker 2: be really exciting to see that.
Speaker 1: One for sure got to go there. Can I ask
Speaker 1: you questions from listeners?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay, they know you're coming on. They've submitted hundreds of questions.
Speaker 1: So before that, some words from ology sponsors who make
Speaker 1: it possible to donate to a charity of Robin Stores,
Speaker 1: which is in unis F Canada's COVID nineteen vaccine initiative
Speaker 1: to provide vaccines to countries that haven't been able to
Speaker 1: get enough for their citizens. So let's get those burial
Speaker 1: rates down by getting some vaccine rates up. Literally life
Speaker 1: saving work. So there'll be a link to that in
Speaker 1: the show notes, and that donation was made possible by sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's dig deep, let's dish the dirt as we answer
Speaker 1: your tafyological questions. Okay, Paul Smith wants to know what's
Speaker 1: the funniest epitaph you've ever seen? Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: one that made you chuckle?
Speaker 2: I didn't see it in person. I read it in
Speaker 2: a book and I wish I had a copy of
Speaker 2: it exactly here I can try and remember the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It was a joke about these gravestones that would be
Speaker 2: like basically being kind of pompous about the burial space.
Speaker 2: And there was one that was like, oh, I remember
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Here lie the chancel door. Here lie
Speaker 2: I because I'm poor. The further in the more you pay.
Speaker 2: But here Lie I as warm as they nice.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a really beautifully thought out fuck you
Speaker 1: to classism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a post mortem treatise on the ills of
Speaker 1: classism and death is the great equalizer. So some patrons
Speaker 1: had durability questions, including Meghan McLean, Margaret ibaccher Rini, Carol
Speaker 1: Wolf from Olivia, Flick, Asia Yeager Lung, Ox, Grace Robischow,
Speaker 1: Mary Liby, and Meghan Stinkle wants to know what kinds
Speaker 1: of stones are air quotes best for longevity of a gravestone.
Speaker 2: Definitely granite, which is like the most common thing you
Speaker 2: see in North America today. It weather is very slowly.
Speaker 2: That's what the Egyptians use for a lot of statues.
Speaker 2: They look great. Your gravestone will look great too. I
Speaker 2: also really like Welsh plate that is very durable material
Speaker 2: and it's very clean looking. I don't like all the
Speaker 2: speckles in granite. Sometimes the Welsh plate is also really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good to know. I love that. You're just like,
Speaker 1: here's the answer you.
Speaker 2: I've thought about that one.
Speaker 1: Heathcliff the Cat wrote in to say history of Zinky's
Speaker 1: When did zinc headstones first become popular and how prevalent
Speaker 1: are they today? Do people still use them?
Speaker 2: I don't actually know when they started being used specifically.
Speaker 2: I know it was in the nineteenth century and they
Speaker 2: were mostly made on the Eastern Sea board.
Speaker 1: Okay, I looked up and yes, you can still spot
Speaker 1: zinc tombstones by this really characteristic bluish white color, kind
Speaker 1: of like the light sapphire tones of a glacier. Think
Speaker 1: of that and according to the Tomb Tone a better
Speaker 1: place Death and Burial in nineteenth century Ontario by Susan Smart,
Speaker 1: the main zinc headstone producer in North America was Monumental
Speaker 1: Bronze Company, Bridge Park, Connecticut. Shout out to I guess
Speaker 1: Bridge Park, Connecticut, and that company opened up in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy four.
Speaker 2: They had a secondary factory in Saint Thomas, Ontario, which
Speaker 2: is near London, Ontario. For a while they were it's
Speaker 2: been moderately popular. You do see one or two in graveyards,
Speaker 2: sometimes a couple more than that, but like I can
Speaker 2: think of one in all of Saint John's, Newfoundland where
Speaker 2: I live. So they were like things that happened, but
Speaker 2: they aren't the most prevalent type of gravestone from that period.
Speaker 2: But they do hold up beautifully there. They just look stunning. Wow.
Speaker 1: Do you call them zinkies or is that just a
Speaker 1: heathcliff the cat.
Speaker 2: No, people, I don't call them that because I think
Speaker 2: it's it sounds funny, but that's like one of the
Speaker 2: nicknames for it. They're like zinc is the material they're
Speaker 2: made of. But historically they were called white bronze because
Speaker 2: they were trying to make them sound very like high
Speaker 2: lass and fancy, but they are made of think that's
Speaker 2: where think You's come from.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's I think it sounds kind of cute.
Speaker 1: It also sounds like a party drug. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you.
Speaker 2: It does a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yea, yeah, like dude, he was rolling on Zankees and
Speaker 1: uh anyway, Emma Fitzpatrick, I thought this was an awesome question.
Speaker 1: So awesome it was on a lot of mine, such
Speaker 1: as Earl of Gramulkin, Leanna Schuster, Jessica Ward, Polly Roberts,
Speaker 1: first time question asker Lydia, Katie Coast, Hannah Dent, Racial Kasha,
Speaker 1: and Casey Kenton, many of whom wanted to know about
Speaker 1: grave makeovers, or they were referencing someone on TikTok named
Speaker 1: Lady Taffo's. So yes, Emma Fitzpatrick asked, have you seen
Speaker 1: the gravestone cleaning tiktoks? If so, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about them? I've heard people say they're bad because of
Speaker 1: chemicals and increased weathering, but what's the truth.
Speaker 2: So I actually recently gave a conference paper about the
Speaker 2: Gristi cleaning TikTok.
Speaker 1: You came to the right person.
Speaker 2: So the lot of people that are doing it are
Speaker 2: doing it correctly. They're using what looks like a chemical
Speaker 2: the non ionic biological solution, the main one in North
Speaker 2: America is called D two biological solutions. So what that
Speaker 2: is is a THH neutral cleaner that won't introduce any
Speaker 2: salts or acids to the stone while safely removing environmental
Speaker 2: staining and stuff like like in growth. And then it
Speaker 2: also sits in the stone and inhibits further like in
Speaker 2: growth and staining for like several years after you use it.
Speaker 2: But what I think the problem with the TikTok videos
Speaker 2: is that they're so short and a lot of the
Speaker 2: times they don't have words in them, or they don't
Speaker 2: have enough time or space in the caption. I think
Speaker 2: the TikTok caption length is quite short. They aren't able
Speaker 2: to really explain what it is they're doing and what
Speaker 2: they're using and how they're using it safely. And we've noticed,
Speaker 2: like me and other people in sort of history and
Speaker 2: cemetery archaeology have noticed that throughout like the lockdown, people
Speaker 2: have been seeing videos like that and being like, that's
Speaker 2: a cool thing I can do while we're all trapped
Speaker 2: at home and maybe not knowing exactly what they're doing
Speaker 2: going out and causing some damage, unfortunately to gravestones. So
Speaker 2: I think I would want to say, like, those videos
Speaker 2: are cool, they're really good. I've done a couple of
Speaker 2: HI talks. I'm not very good at it, but it's
Speaker 2: so difficult to explain exactly what you're doing. So I
Speaker 2: would definitely say, like, if you want to go clean gravestones,
Speaker 2: get training from someone who is a grave stone conservator.
Speaker 2: Email me I'm a gravestone conservator, and get the information
Speaker 2: and then get permission from the fight that you want
Speaker 2: to clean up. Because if you don't have permission from
Speaker 2: the people that are managing that graveyard, you should not
Speaker 2: be there, got it.
Speaker 1: So don't like roll up with an sospad in a
Speaker 1: bucket of place. You should just go to town.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, do not do either of those.
Speaker 1: Don't do that.
Speaker 2: It's made me cringe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a feeling. Speaking of dos and don'ts
Speaker 1: of the dead. Cosmo wants to know is there any
Speaker 1: graveyard etiquette most people don't know, Like if you're walking
Speaker 1: through a cemetery should you try to walk on perimeters,
Speaker 1: so not over the graves.
Speaker 2: I don't personally see a problem with walking over graves,
Speaker 2: but I know a lot of people find that for
Speaker 2: themselves is very disrespectful. I know people that will apologize
Speaker 2: if they step on a grave. I do try to
Speaker 2: avoid walking through lots that have like gravel and sort
Speaker 2: of the curbing around them. On those ones, I typically,
Speaker 2: unless I have to go look at the gravestone, will
Speaker 2: walk around them. But if it's a grass lawn area,
Speaker 2: it's really difficult to avoid stepping on a grave occasionally.
Speaker 2: So just be respectful while you're in the space as
Speaker 2: best you can.
Speaker 1: Basically mm hm Okay, good to know. Don't pee on
Speaker 1: one unless you have a personal vendetta, in which case
Speaker 1: that's between you and the dead. Probably don't pe in idea,
Speaker 1: it's probably talk to therapists. Okay. So long Ox wants
Speaker 1: to know, is there a go to source for decoding
Speaker 1: the symbology of Victorian gravestones all those vases and dogs
Speaker 1: o coachant and lamps and plants. Long ooc says that
Speaker 1: they need a website or a pamphlet or a decoder ring.
Speaker 2: A decoder ring would be sick. I would love that
Speaker 2: there are a lot of resources online, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of different books that will talk about the different
Speaker 2: sort of iconography and stuff. A lot of it you
Speaker 2: sort of get from reading these older books like Henrietta
Speaker 2: Forbes Gravestones of New England and the Men Who Made
Speaker 2: Them is like literally the start of a lot of
Speaker 2: graveyard scholarship in North America. And she does talk about
Speaker 2: the symbology a little bit, but yeah, I can't think
Speaker 2: of a specific resource online. I would avoid ones that
Speaker 2: talk about Puritan gravestone art because that's not a thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they were very very minimalist, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were either minimalists or you hear that terminology
Speaker 2: applied to like the skulls and stuff specifically. But it's
Speaker 2: been disproven that was like a theory in like the seventies,
Speaker 2: but it's been disproven that that mortality like symbology is
Speaker 2: directly related to the Puritans. And it comes up a
Speaker 2: lot because of this like old study that was done
Speaker 2: and popularized it. So you see it a lot online
Speaker 2: and I have a personal pandetic and it's.
Speaker 1: Good to know and speaking of that kind of symbology,
Speaker 1: jess One had the question, are there any trends in
Speaker 1: gravestone imagery in the last decade? Are there jokes about
Speaker 1: millennials putting QR codes on their gravestones or having little
Speaker 1: TVs with memes playing, But is there anything real in
Speaker 1: terms of changing styles.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So a lot of graveyards and cemeteries will have
Speaker 2: rules about the style of headstone you can have. They'll
Speaker 2: be like, you can only have these materials or it
Speaker 2: has to be one of these specific shapes because they're
Speaker 2: trying to like keep it looking cohesive. But what that
Speaker 2: allows is people to do a lot more creative things
Speaker 2: with like laser etching pictures that are more personal to
Speaker 2: them than this like stock set of images that they
Speaker 2: used to get like a couple hundred years ago. So
Speaker 2: we get to see a lot more like portraits of
Speaker 2: people photos. I saw one recently that was like someone's
Speaker 2: cabin definitely, and there was like a boat in the water,
Speaker 2: and you could tell that that was probably a place
Speaker 2: that was really important to them. So that's I think
Speaker 2: the biggest trend that you see on the last decade
Speaker 2: or two is like a lot more personalization in the headstones.
Speaker 1: I have seen more pictures and it really does personalize
Speaker 1: it and make you reflect on your own life as well.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Victrona wants to know what's the most interesting ritual you've
Speaker 1: come across. Example, placing a small polished stone on top
Speaker 1: of the headstone is popular in Judaism. Anything like that.
Speaker 2: Hmm, that's a tougher one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about fake flowers on gravestones? I
Speaker 1: have mixed feelings.
Speaker 2: I don't mind them. They do last a bit longer,
Speaker 2: but also plastic.
Speaker 1: I know that's how I feel too. And of course
Speaker 1: Cole and Perry, herself a death worker and president of
Speaker 1: the Board of Overseers at historic Lynden Grove Cemetery in Covington, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: wanted to toss in a question Cole and Perry death
Speaker 1: expert panatologists. She says, Okay, gravestones at her cemetery, which
Speaker 1: she works as like a conservator up two, only about
Speaker 1: five thousand of our twenty thousand permanent residents have headstones.
Speaker 1: Some of the people without headstones today likely had wooden headstones.
Speaker 1: Was that actually a thing? Wooden headstones?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of like and we can see
Speaker 2: this archaeologically. A lot of the time, people would be
Speaker 2: marked with maybe a cross or just a little tablet
Speaker 2: or something, and what that shows up as in the
Speaker 2: archaeological record is a post pole. So where that piece
Speaker 2: of wood has decomposed in place, that changes the composition
Speaker 2: of the sediment that it's in a lot of the
Speaker 2: time when there's unmarked graves, maybe they were unmarked originally.
Speaker 2: Maybe they had a marker that was biodegradable and has
Speaker 2: gone for like one hundred years or more.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I mean, if you think about how many
Speaker 1: people probably also just dealt with surprise deaths and did
Speaker 1: something kind of just with whatever they had. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of unmarked out there as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, gravestones are very expensive. They weren't and they weren't
Speaker 2: cheap too hundred years ago as well.
Speaker 1: That was actually going to be my final listener question.
Speaker 1: Several people, including Val McKelvey, Alisa Williams Pears, Rachel Phelps,
Speaker 1: Julie McDonald, and Alia Myers all wanted to know how
Speaker 1: much have things changed in terms of cost. Why are
Speaker 1: they so expensive? Rachel asked, are there any stats on
Speaker 1: how many families opt out of burial marking or plaques
Speaker 1: for reasons, including costs or besides costs. So, yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about how class and expense comes
Speaker 1: into play when it involves your final resting place. If
Speaker 1: no one built a condo on top of you.
Speaker 2: That's the goal. Yeah, So it definitely is something that
Speaker 2: you can see was based on your economic status. When
Speaker 2: you have an unmarked grave or an unmarked burial ground,
Speaker 2: a pauper's grave, they would be unmarked, they would be
Speaker 2: marked with something like a cross, or wouldn't wooden board
Speaker 2: or something. And then the fancier a monument is the
Speaker 2: more money either the person had who died or the
Speaker 2: family or whoever their benefactor was they put this monument up.
Speaker 2: So that goes from like the little tiny like tablet
Speaker 2: ones with just a couple of lines on them. The
Speaker 2: more types of fronts you had on a gravestone, the
Speaker 2: more expensive it was.
Speaker 3: Oh it costs more because of the parent, Yeah, rightfully.
Speaker 2: So when the bigger, like the more pieces went into it.
Speaker 2: If it was a ledger, which is like the big
Speaker 2: flat thing on the ground, or a table tomb which
Speaker 2: had legs, or a chest tomb which had walls as
Speaker 2: well as a liam, you can just tell how much
Speaker 2: money people were putting into it, and a lot of
Speaker 2: that was because people wanted to show how much like
Speaker 2: look at our material care for our deceased loved ones.
Speaker 2: It was like almost a way of showing off. And
Speaker 2: you can kind of people do that today as well.
Speaker 2: And some aspects of the funit the funeral industry, you're
Speaker 2: kind of predatory, unfortunately, and people get told like, oh,
Speaker 2: but like you would want to honor this person this way,
Speaker 2: so you should splash out and pay like five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for this gigantic granite, thaying that maybe you can't afford.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gracie Zurin phrased it are elaborate gravestones, a power
Speaker 1: play of wealthy families. Well yeah, but it might also
Speaker 1: be just the industry pulling at your very raw open
Speaker 1: heart strings too. Yeah. And last questions, I are actually
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask this one super quick. Case I
Speaker 1: just saw Casey Wendy's longtime listener. First time question asker says,
Speaker 1: my husband showed me a gravestone locally that's actually a
Speaker 1: hidden chamber. You flip it over and it holds I
Speaker 1: guess contraband have you ever seen a gravestone.
Speaker 2: Like this, I require photos. That's amazing. I've never seen
Speaker 2: one like that that. I have heard that the that
Speaker 2: the zinkies were used during Prohibition era to hide alcohol
Speaker 2: and then like as a drop point to sell it
Speaker 2: to people, And I would die to find one unintended.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean my assessment that it sounds like a
Speaker 1: party drug not that far off. Now, something's got to
Speaker 1: suck about what you do. What is the worst part
Speaker 1: of your job or being a tofologist tathologist. What's the
Speaker 1: most annoying or bummer thing about your work?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not like it's not super cheery. Everyone
Speaker 2: we work with is dead. I have a good time
Speaker 2: usually with that, but sometimes you're like, wow, this is
Speaker 2: like especially with stories like Robert, but really like takes
Speaker 2: you back a step and consider the type of work
Speaker 2: you're doing, just like what it means to people. But
Speaker 2: also when we're doing Graystone conservation, it's a lot of unglamorous,
Speaker 2: heavy listing of really heavy rops that don't want to
Speaker 2: come out of the ground. And I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of archaeology is digging holes and this is no different
Speaker 2: and it's incredibly tiring.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I bet do you bother with manicures or are
Speaker 1: you like, you know what that's.
Speaker 2: Not so nail polish can come off if you scratch
Speaker 2: it on marble. It can stand the marble. So no
Speaker 2: nail paint during the field season.
Speaker 1: Oh good too. What about your favorite thing? What do
Speaker 1: you love about? Gravestones, cemeteries, all of that.
Speaker 4: All of it.
Speaker 2: Being able to work in these sites that have so
Speaker 2: much history, especially in smaller communities, people are so invested
Speaker 2: in their local heritage and being able to sort of
Speaker 2: contribute to the knowledge that people have about a community's history,
Speaker 2: about individuals, and just like being able to be involved
Speaker 2: in the continuation of protecting that heritage for the future.
Speaker 2: And when we repair gravestones, they're often stones that have
Speaker 2: been neglected, they've fallen over, no one has seen the
Speaker 2: names on them for ages. So being able to sort
Speaker 2: of clean them and put them back up and have
Speaker 2: them back in the public eye like they were supposed
Speaker 2: to be originally is a really nice feeling.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What are your Halloween plans?
Speaker 4: Ooh?
Speaker 2: My husband and I are currently making Tuscan raider masks
Speaker 2: nice out of cardboard and three D printed their spiky
Speaker 2: things that come out of their heads. And my friend
Speaker 2: is having a pumpkin carving party, so lovely.
Speaker 1: No graveyards though, huh.
Speaker 2: Actually the Talk Death, which is a Canadian death positive group,
Speaker 2: they do a online scavenger hunt in cemetery, so you
Speaker 2: like go to a cemetery and then at a certain
Speaker 2: time they release a bunch of like scavenger hunt things.
Speaker 2: You have to send them photos and then there's prize
Speaker 2: packs that we'll probably be doing that as well, and
Speaker 2: like everybody should participate in that too, because it's oh.
Speaker 1: That's great. I'm sure you just gave a lot of
Speaker 1: people ideas of what they're doing this Halloween.
Speaker 2: I hope so so I won it last year, so.
Speaker 1: Like, whoa, watch out, watch out, you're going down. You're
Speaker 1: going six feet under. Also, uh, step up people, step
Speaker 1: up your cardboard headstone game in your front yard this year.
Speaker 1: Step it up. Spoiler bigger words GTFO with the rip.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I love that
Speaker 1: I now know a techologist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So ask smart folks simpleton questions because they are just
Speaker 1: faults of information. And you can follow Robin at Graveyard
Speaker 1: Underscore Arch on Twitter and Instagram. Her website is Spade
Speaker 1: inthegrave dot com, and she and her husband Ian Petty
Speaker 1: have a gravestone conservation website at Blackcatseemeterypreservation dot WordPress dot com.
Speaker 1: So those links will be up at my site alliwarn
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Ology, slash Tefology, and we are at
Speaker 1: all Je's on Twitter at Instagram. I'm Ali word with
Speaker 1: one L on both. Thank you to Aaron Talbert who
Speaker 1: admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group, with help from Bonnie
Speaker 1: Dutch and Shannon Faltis of the podcast You Are That.
Speaker 1: They also help with merch. Emily White of the Wordery
Speaker 1: makes our transcripts and Caleb Patten bleeps him. Noel Dilworth
Speaker 1: handles scheduling and so much more. Susan Hale is on
Speaker 1: the other side of some merch emails and ologies business.
Speaker 1: Stephen Ray Morris and Sigurodriguez Thomas are working on newsmologies
Speaker 1: for your kiddos coming out very soon. Nick Norburn made
Speaker 1: the theme music. Right hand man Hunk Jarrett Sleeper of
Speaker 1: mind Jam Media put it all together while I am
Speaker 1: on the other side of a continent in this case
Speaker 1: this hotel in Boston for a few days shooting for CBS.
Speaker 1: Oddly also not very far from where my ward ancestors
Speaker 1: were buried in the seventeen hundreds, will be shooting two
Speaker 1: miles away from them tomorrow. Bananas. Now, if you stick
Speaker 1: around through the credits, I tell you something spooky. Two things,
Speaker 1: all right, Okay, Jarrett and I drove past Forest Lawn
Speaker 1: Cemetery in Burbank last week and we both spotted a
Speaker 1: frickin' casket abandon mid burial with the top off on
Speaker 1: the lawn, just strewn about the lawn ten feet away.
Speaker 1: It was almost dark out, there was no one working
Speaker 1: on it. We freaked out. We were driving past, Really
Speaker 1: did you see that?
Speaker 2: Did you see that?
Speaker 1: We wanted to go back, but we were late to
Speaker 1: see dune. Anyway, we agreed, the one thing you don't
Speaker 1: want to take its own top off is a coffin. Then,
Speaker 1: in researching this, I realized it was probably the burial
Speaker 1: vault being put in place the day before a funeral.
Speaker 1: That way a casket could be placed in it the
Speaker 1: next day, which then became not creepy but sad. Also,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I had these recurring cemetery nightmares,
Speaker 1: and I would have these anxiety attacks just driving past graveyards,
Speaker 1: and my dreams sometimes involved caskets flying open. Somehow I
Speaker 1: got over it. I think I had to go to
Speaker 1: like an open casket funeral of a relative, and I
Speaker 1: just realized everyone in a cemetery is just someone's relative.
Speaker 1: But that being said, I've watched a lot of I
Speaker 1: think you should leave in the last few months, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever left harder than the
Speaker 1: coffin flop sketch. It was everything my brain fears. Uh
Speaker 1: and wow, the catharsis anyway. Happy Halloween, exund spoop to Ober,
Speaker 1: Bye bye hacadermatology, hobiology, ordo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology,
Speaker 1: people of paratology, nathology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 2: What do you want on your two stone?
Speaker 3: Pepperoni and cheese,