A SMALL HISTORY OF THE CEMETERY. A cemetery is not just tombstones, monuments, and a lot of crosses. Cemeteries are among the most fascinating sites of a community, and can be one the best sources of information about the area's past. The types of headstones, art, and insciptions, tell us a lot about their religious beliefs, social class and values.

Graveyards and cemetries have been around for thousands of years. Many people find them peacefull and calming, but just as many find them scary and bothering to a degree. They are after all, a place where the dead are left. They may also be a reminder of the fact that, where life is concerned, no one gets out of it alive!

Between 20,000 and 75,000 years ago, Neanderthals began to bury their dead with some thought of reverence, for example, flowers were left at the site and/or personal effects. They also started the practice of situating the body so that the corpse faced east, something Orthodox Christians still adhere to. Saxons, among others, used a method of "dirt covering" to show social status. The more dirt you were covered over with, the higher the prestige. Shallow graves were subject to being dug up and scavaged by animals, people began to recognize the burial ground's potential for spreading disease and started the practice of locating thier cemeteries outside of the city. The Zoroaster built "Towers of silence" incorporating philters and placing the bodies high in the air where Vultures would clean the bones, eleminating the mess and possible disease of rotting flesh and maggots!

The 17th century saw the beginning of what we now know as the cemetery or graveyard. For many reasons, officials wanted cemeteries out of their cities and during the 1780s, most of the dead of Paris were exhumed and moved into a new system of catacombs. In 1914, the City and Country of San Francisco decided its cemeteries were little more than a magnet for disease and delinquency (grave robbers and crime) and closed them down. People started looking outside the city limits as had been done hundreds of years earlier. A series of epidemics in the United States led to the creation of the first large garden cemeteries. Mount Auburn in Boston (1831), Laurel Hill in Philadelphia (1836), and Green-Wood in Brooklyn (1838). It began a return to burying the dead in rural areas. With the rise of romanticism, death took on a more "favored state" and along with the renewed knowledge of the necessity to protect the public health, garden cemeteries made thier stay! Garden cemeteries were also not associated with a church or parish. The public loved the new cemeteries and they became a place for weekend walks amid the monuments and park-like settings.

LINKS TO MORE DETAILED HISTORY

CITY OF THE SILENT HISTORY

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