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Cemetery Preservation and Beautification of Death: Investigations of Unmarked Early to Mid-Nineteenth-Century Burial Grounds in Central Kentucky

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Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains

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Abstract

Urban and rural contexts can provide a challenge to researchers investigating nineteenth-century burial grounds. Within these localities, plots often were reused, and changing land-use patterns and absence of historic records resulted in many being lost to history. Through the investigation of the Old Frankfort (neighborhood burial ground for the enslaved, freed African Americans, and poor to lower middle class), Eastern State Hospital (residents interred on the hospital’s property), and Kentucky Horse Park (rural family and enslaved burial ground) burial grounds, patterns of commingling documented in the archaeological record are explored. It is concluded that to varying degrees the socioeconomic status (SES) of, and structural violence to, those interred within urban burial grounds, along with nineteenth-century attitudes toward the dead and the degree of connectedness of the dead with the living, contributed to the commingling of remains within each burial ground.

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Acknowledgements

The list of those people to whom we are indebted is long, and begins with our editor Anna Osterholtz, comments from Tiffany Tung and Debra Martin. The archaeologists at the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS) make this all possible. Heather Worne and Gregg Maggard provided indispensable help with the Eastern States project. Kentucky Finance Administration provided funding for the excavation and analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Criminology and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 2134 Laurentide Hall, 800 West Main Street, 53190, Whitewater, WI, USA

    Peter Killoran

  2. Department of Anthropology, Kentucky Archaeological Survey and University of Kentucky, 1020A Export Street, 40506, Lexington, KY, USA

    David Pollack

  3. Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, 211 Lafferty Hall, 40506, Lexington, KY, USA

    Stuart Nealis & Emily Rinker

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  1. Peter Killoran
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  2. David Pollack
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  4. Emily Rinker
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Correspondence to Peter Killoran .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

    Anna J. Osterholtz

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Killoran, P., Pollack, D., Nealis, S., Rinker, E. (2016). Cemetery Preservation and Beautification of Death: Investigations of Unmarked Early to Mid-Nineteenth-Century Burial Grounds in Central Kentucky. In: Osterholtz, A. (eds) Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22554-8_11

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