Naked and Beheaded: Memorial Monument Analysis

Children's graves in the South Eastern corner of Ross Bay Cemetery

View Naked and Beheaded: A Survey of Children's Graves at Ross Bay Cemetery in a larger map


1)   Eleven children’s graves in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and general use sections of the South Eastern corner of the Ross Bay Cemetery comprised the data set for my “Memorial Monument Analysis” group; however we did record a twelfth grave which was the deceased adult twin brother of one of the children. For our analysis, we chose to try and include a children’s grave only if the child was under ten years of age when they died. However there were a few exceptions, two of the graves did not include the age or date the child died but did address them as “baby”, as well we recorded the adult twin brother (as mentioned above) of one of the children.
   Throughout the field research we identified a few different limitations to our study that are important to consider when analyzing the data. These limitations include: the scope of our study (e.g. small sample size and small area surveyed), missing information on graves (e.g. cause of death, year of death, age), our limited historical background and limited knowledge on different religious burial practices.


2) Possible Research Questions:
- What is the distribution of children’s graves in the South Eastern section of the Ross Bay Cemetery?
- How do the children’s graves sites and markers vary from one another (size, shape etc.)?
- How are the children’s graves aligned? Is the alignment consistent or how does it vary?
- When did the children die? Is there a particular year that repeatedly comes up, perhaps because of disease or certain historical event?
- Is there a consistent timeline of children’s graves or are there gaps in time? If there are gaps, why weren’t they buried at Ross Bay Cemetery?
- Are there other clusters of children’s graves found within Ross Bay Cemetery?

3)   When thinking about cemeteries and burials, most people may think about an older generation passing on after having a long life. But in fact, there is a great deal of age variation within cemeteries ranging from young infants to the elderly. Although North American society has, for the most part, come a long ways in health advancements and longevity, there is no way to know how long each individual will live.
      Graves sites and grave markers come in all different shapes and sizes, ranging from large to very small ones depending on the cultural burial practice or religious view of the people at the time. In the Ross Bay Cemetery, small graves were sought out in hopes that they were children’s graves; not all of the children’s graves were small but this method helped to find many of the sites. In the St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard in Ontario, Canada, excavators found that the size of a coffin usually corresponded with the age of the individual inside, however the shape of the coffin did not (McKillop 1995: 82). The “Monument Analysis” group did not know at the time what to look for, but McKillop’s idea (though much more extensive) loosely supports the simple way the Ross Bay Cemetery analysis began.
      When examining the Ross Bay Cemetery, the main research question posed was: what is the distribution of children’s graves in the South Eastern corner of this cemetery. This section of the cemetery was mentioned in one of the group members Medical Anthropology classes as having a large amount of children’s graves and was the driving factor for selecting this area for survey and analysis. Although the group was able to find numerous children’s graves, there did not appear to be any particular spacing, patterning or distribution to them, although they all were lined up East to West (with the grave marker on either end). After conducting some additional research, the group realized that overtime the cemetery had changed it’s segregation of religious backgrounds and beliefs. Originally the group had found an older map and thought that the area surveyed was strictly Roman Catholic, which did not seem to fit the graves sites and markers that were found. But, a more recent map was later found which revealed the survey area to contain Roman Catholic, Anglican and a general use section. The group then postulated that perhaps there was no noticeable distribution pattern because of the change in different religious practices within the survey area. However, just as there was no particular distribution at the Ross Bay Cemetery, this observation was similarly recorded in St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard, where the children’s graves were found in a variety of different locations within the cemetery (McKillop 1995: 88), as well as Indian Knoll in Kentucky and Dickson Mounds in Illinois where both children and adults were mixed in the different grave clusters (Rothschild 1979: 671). Therefore, children may not have been segregated within the cemetery on purpose.
      One very interesting observation that was made in the Ontario churchyard excavations was that children were not always buried in association with their mothers but they were in family plots near other relatives (McKillop 1995: 88). Similarly, during the Ross Bay Cemetery survey, the group found one child, Mary Elizabeth Rickard, who was buried in a family plot but were unable to tell who her mother was. After reading McKillop’s article, the group survey observations seemed much more logical.
      When comparing the group’s data from the “Monument Analysis” in Ross Bay Cemetery to other field work in different parts of North America, across different cultural groups and across time, it was very interesting to note the similarities between them. With this in mind, cross cultural comparisons can be considered very useful when trying to interpret data. Children were not found to be segregated from the rest of the population in any of these surveys and therefore the question could arise as to why this may have been. Perhaps keeping the children with the rest of the population was a way in which the living sought to protect their children and a way to make the deceased children feel safe.


Works Cited

McKillop, H. 1995, "Recognizing Children's Graves in Nineteenth-Century Cemeteries: Excavations in St. Thomas Anglican Churchyard, Belleville, Ontario, Canada", Historical Archaeology, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. pp. 77-99.

Rothschild, N.A. 1979, "Mortuary Behaviour and Social Organization at Indian Knoll and Dickson Mounds", American Antiquity, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. pp. 658-675. 

"If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can't buy” (proverb)

Status.... One word, yet it can mean a multitude of different things depending on the context, who is being asked and depending on the culture you are referring it to.

I think that archaeologists look at status as a way to separate the people, the land and the world. Status can be a way to categorize and describe what we see each and everyday. Depending on where an archaeologist is working, status could refer to a simple or complex hierarchy of social organization within a society, which could be determined by birth, family, marriage, occupation, death, or perhaps religion. These are just a few ideas I thought of off the top of my head but once again depending on the person, each and every one of us could have a different idea about status and investigate this abstract concept in a different way. Status is perceptual and is a cultural construct.

Depending on whether we are studying a deceased past population, whose remains are excavated and studied, or a living population, that we can study through ethnographic field work, the techniques and strategies of measuring status could be completely different. The advantage of investigating a living population is that an anthropologist can go into the field and observe behaviour as it is occurring in real-time; whereas when studying a deceased population we have to interpret, from the remains, how these people may have interacted. I believe these two different types of studies have one overarching factor in common and that is the fact that in both cases the anthropologist may not be able to fully understand the society, but needs to make inferences based on patterns and relationships that they see.

Often times when looking at burials, anthropologists are quick to assume that a person buried with or without particular grave goods would have had a high or low status, but these assumptions are based on what we believe to have value today. Below is a picture of burial goods from a Late Roman burial, these grave goods which are thought to have been valuable to this culture may carry little value in another society so it is important to remember that value is perceptual.

(Example of grave goods from a Late Roman burial)
Available at:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/82535535_32bee80cd3.jpg

The archaeology of death, or the study of mortuary analysis, can be thought of as both the study of the dead, as well as the study of the living (Parker Pearson 1999:3). As such, burials found within the archaeological record can be looked at as representations of both the deceased individual and the past society who put the time and effort into burying the individual (Parker Pearson 1999:3).

I believe that, often times, archaeologists will interpret grave goods as representations of the person buried and not always take into consideration the family and society that contributed to this process.
In fact, graves can often tell archaeologists more about a living society from the past than it can about the particular deceased individual being studied because, “the wishes of the deceased are not always followed” by the living (Parker Pearson 1993:203).

As much as I would like to believe that my family knows me well enough to bury me with items that I associated with and had a fondness for in life, if I were to die tomorrow I don't think that my grave would be an exact representation of the real me. I think that they might put items in that reminded them of me and perhaps not what I would put it.

As well, I think that if someone were to undercover me years from now they may be misled as to my social status within the society. As I am a student, and we all know how tough that can be on the wallet, I would not be able to afford the burial that my parents would most likely provide for me.

In the end it is not important to me how or where I am buried, it is how I will be remembered that will count.

Resources Consulted:
- Parker Pearson, M. 1993. The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships between the
Living and the Dead. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3(2):203-229.
- Parker Pearson, M. 1999. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas: Texas A&M
University Press.