Monument Analysis: What makes you 'unique' after death?

For our Monument analysis project my group went to the Ross Bay cemetery. Our research question that we went into the cemetery with was the question: What makes a grave stand out? Is there a progression of change as time moves on? We also wanted to look into what the motivation behind a grave like that, and would it have been the family or the deceased choice to have such an incredible grave?

The graves we chose were relatively scattered throughout the cemetery, only a few clusters of the graves. We marked down on our map what the graves looked like and what made them unique. Of course because of the size of Ross Bay cemetery, we had to limit our dataset to only 11 graves. While there are many more unique and outstanding graves in the cemetery, our choices I believe create a varied sample of the types of graves in the cemetery. 

Our whole group went to the cemetery and studied each grave together. We looked at size, description, art, style, and materials used. To me the grave that stood out the most was the Anchor grave. 

Schultz and Sims. "Faith, Love and Hope."

This was a plot for two young women that had their names on small plaques on opposite corners of a large anchor. The plot was covered with a green vine or plant, that was very well maintained. The anchor itself, after close inspection, looks to be a real anchor that has been painted many times and is not just a sculpture for this grave. It also contains two stones, one with a Cross carved into it, and one with "Faith, Love and Hope," with the carvings of a cross, a heart and an anchor. This stood out in the whole grave yard because it wasn't a stone. It was a large anchor that was viewable from all sides and you could see it from far away. It was easily identifiable as this grave, and I'm sure there isn't another one similar to it at the cemetery. 

Over-all I found that what mattered the most to what made a grave stand out was the context in which it was placed. So even though I did find that the change in grave style happened over time, there is still a sense that within the more modern graves the ones we chose are the ones that stand out within their areas. Since the cemetery is grouped off into different religious affiliations, and times, it was within each of these areas that we looked for differences. While one grave may have looked unique and significant within it's surroundings, if we were to have seen it in a different section of the cemetery it may not have been the same reaction. The first grave we looked at stood out because it was a grave for a small child and the stone itself was very small and not associated with any family. 

Verna M.

It was also an interesting because it was more like a sculpture than a grave stone. However had we seen this near the other child grave that we looked at which had stuffed animals and a little garden in front of it, it may not have been so remarkable. But in the area it was in, it was significantly smaller and less grandiose, as well most graves in that area were either included with family or were beside family. 

I believe that we were also influenced by our own culture, and were looking at the graves with a familiarity with the simple grave stone or the mausoleum. At least that is what I expected going into the cemetery. Even the ones with the beautiful carvings or large plots associated with them stood out to me since in my mind when I think of a grave I think of the typical flat stone on a single grave. Personal biases definitely made some of the graves stand out in my mind. For instance in the area where we found some of the most recent graves, so many of them stood out to me. There was a lot of unique graves that were not what I imagined a grave to be like. For instance the "Ross" grave included a headstone and an engraved table, between them was planted a tree and surrounding both were flowers. 

Ross. Table on one side and Headstone on the other.

This does not in my mind signify a grave, so much so that I'm sure if it weren't within the context of a cemetery I would not think it was an actual grave, but more like a memorial. Why I have made this distinction in my mind, I'm not sure. As if burials are saved for the cemetery and not for the rest of the world. 

Another cultural distinction made was on one of the last graves that we looked at. This was actually the grave that made me realize that we were really just looking at the graves that stood out within their context. We were in the Roman Catholic area, and all the graves were evenly plotted and all had a fairly similar design, and all that I could see were facing West. This made the 'Bermarija," grave stand out here.

Bermarja.

 While it still followed the similar size and faced the West as well, it was covered with a large black granite slab over the grave itself and the headstone was black granite as well. The inscriptions were painted white and written in Croatian. It also contained two inlaid pictures of the deceased husband and wife. I didn't see any other graves like this one (although I was informed that there were a couple that had pictures inlaid in them as well) and the pictures more than anything else made them stand out quite a bit. That mixed with the black granite slabs reminded me of the article by Garazhian and Papoli Yazdi, about how the grave decoration changed in Bam after the earthquake. This contained similar characteristics with the photos of the deceased and the slabs over the graves. What made it stand out to me was how very different it was to most of the other graves in the cemetery, and it is clear that it is purely a different culture with different religious practices regarding the deceased. Now I am more curious about that culture and even economic status, whether this is standard or spectacular. However had I not known about the tradition, it would have made this grave stand out for a different reason. I would not be wondering about potential economic status and culture, but perhaps why their grave was important. The difference that makes it stand out would perhaps have lead me to a different conclusion about the reasons behind the style of grave. Coming back to the idea that our choices were coloured by our culture. 

What made these graves stand out to us was not the fact that they were all entirely unique and never been done before, but that they made an impression in their area. They stood out within their own culture or religion and that is what made them significant. 

The most interesting question that we came up with, we can't necessarily answer within this type of project. Were it a more in-depth project where our data could include interviews with possible family members or research into personal records or newspaper obituaries we would be able to go into the reasoning behind the choices of graves. Who made the choice? Was it a choice made with the deceased prior to death? Or was it the family honouring a loved one in a spectacular way? Or maybe even the community choosing to honour an outstanding community member? This is the aspect of our project that we could not answer, no matter how much time with the graves we spent.

View A Selection of Unique Graves in Ross Bay Cemetery in a larger map



Garazhian, O & Papoli Yazdi, L 2008, 'Mortuary Practices in Bam after the Earthquake: An Ethnoarchaeological study', Journal of Social Archaeology, vol. 8, no.1, pp.94-112. 

Since I'm up this late...

Ok, it might not be that late for you, but 10:30 pm is pretty late for me.

I have been meaning to write a post to show off my cool brother's awesome tumblr page! It's called http://anthrocuriosities.tumblr.com/ and it is all anthropology all the time. He recently added me to it so that I could contribute anthropology stuff since I'm in classes full time and am learning all this awesome stuff all the time. Unfortunately I am finding a hard time keeping up with school itself, let alone ANOTHER blog on the side. You will every now and then see some posts I've done which you will easily recognize as things we've seen or heard about in class.

If any of you have a tumblr and love posting anthropology stuff let me know! I will follow you and reblog any cool stuff you guys are posting. If anything it is a great blog my brother started that is constantly updating with a huge variety of anthropological gold!

A lovely recent post my brother found! Click here to check it out!

Stephen Fry is the host. Seriously. It's the best.

Hey! So I wanted to share with the class just how I knew about the Buddhist Self-mummification. I know, most people don't really find it necessary to share the roads that led them to the odds and ends of information gathering in their brains but this is just too cool, I feel I need to share. I love it that much.

I'm sure a bunch of you have heard of the British show QI. It stands for Quite Interesting because that is all that matters to them. You don't merely gain points for right answers and lose points for wrong answers, you get points for being interesting and lose them by being predictable. It is very common for the panellists all to end up with points in the negative numbers. But that's what makes it so fun! Stephen Fry is the host and Alan Davies his recurring guest every week, all the other panellists are different each episode.

Anyways, I was re-watching some episodes for the one that had the Buddhist mummification in it because I told one of the members of that group that I would find it and maybe they could put it somewhere on the site. There probably aren't too much mentions of that sort of practice in popular culture so it would be a cool link! This episode turned out to be a gold mine for this class! Not only does it have the mummification, it also includes the creative coffins that Meredith talks about in her blog from Ghana, and even cemetery memorial symbolism. So good and so hilarious:

Enjoy!

My own Grave Goods

My mother and I have already talked about what we want to happen when we die and neither of us actually wants to be buried at all. This made this weeks topic kind of strange and difficult for me, I had to totally revise my ideas of what to do with my body once I was dead. The idea of being stuck in the ground with my things just seems cramped and kind of pointless to me, but none the less it made for a cool topic that was fun to explore.

What I would put in my grave would be kind of boring, I would have my favorite dress on and possibly my paper crane necklace that I always wear. Those are really the only things I feel would be necessary. Even when it came to coming up with ideas of ANYTHING I could put in there that would tell someone about who I was, I just came up blank. I feel like the only thing that I could do is just more jewellery. I want loads of diamonds and pearls in my grave. But honestly that says absolutely nothing about my personality other than the fact that leading future archaeologists to believe I was some kind of royal would be hilarious!

So since I was utterly stumped I started asking family and friends. This was the oddly unsettling part of all this; what everyone else came up with.

My mother was the first person I saw and actually remembered to ask. What I got from her were these things: 

• Art
• Music (Etta James, after I made her narrow it down a bit)
• (and with serious probing and FORCING her to do something less generic) my hair-straightener. If you could have seen my face when my mom said these you would understand why her reaction was "Well I dont know!!!" and then finally added,
• My boxing gloves

This was when I started getting worried. If my own mother only sees me as her little girl and doesn't really know or at least know how to express the other sides of my personality, what was everyone else going to say?

I then went over to my boyfriends apartment to hang out there and asked him the same questions. After a lot of "I don't care"'s and "this is stupid" answers, I finally forced him to just say something! This is what I got:

• a ladle
• lid to a cookie jar
• tiny novelty mug from Nova Scotia
• a Kate Bush album

:| ...... Yea none of these having any relevance to my life or my personality, I then moved on to the next person on my list. (Stupid-useless-annoying-nohelp-good-for-nothing boyfriend. Good thing he's pretty). 

Next I started texting my brother, normally I would just treat him to some sort of greasy disgusting food to get his help but unfortunately he now lives in Vancouver so a text would have to do. Since he has taken this class (and this is just what our brother-sister relationship is like), he hardly needed an explanation to help. He said:

• a bunch of skulls (which he admits would throw off any archaeologist looking at my grave)
• knitting needles
• small furry animals

These things put me a little more at ease since I feel they more reflect my personal interests instead of just my role as a female, which is really what worried me about my mom's ideas. Although this did lead to a hilarious discussion about how exactly the furry animals would be included. For instance would they be tiny adorable sacrifices? Or stuffed toy animals? Or something in between, like taxidermy animals? 

Just toss in some puppies.

At that point my brother just went, "Oh I dont know, do your own homework!"

All-in-all it was pretty fun, I think I really just like getting my family's opinions on things like this because I find their answers hilarious. But still this whole exercise was slightly worrisome and left me a little bit unsettled because of the way in which I found my identity being viewed through the eyes of someone else. The only one that really bothered me was my mother's choices. I suddenly felt as if she was only including the things about me SHE wanted to include. She chose things that, while I do enjoy them, I wouldn't use them in describing my identity. I'm far more complex than that.

THE OTHER THING that came out of this blog prompt was something magical. So magical it has gained a place in legend (well my heart at least). And that, my classmates, is the

~*Legend of the Ponybear*~

When I described this assignment to a friend from a different class all he wanted to do was to mess with the heads of future archaeologists. Not only did he want to be buried with the skeleton of a pony but the pony would have the skull of a bear in place of a pony skull. Amazing, I know. I'll let you take a moment and pick your jaw up from off the floor.

You good?

Good.

This then created so much stir between the two of us that we have been coming up with stories and myths surrounding our lives with the Ponybear. It has been magical. 

I give you the Ponybear:

I suck at photoshop.

The End.

Click images for links to original sites as none of these pictures are my own. (Although I did photoshop the Ponybear...those don't exist.)

Ok, so I have always wanted to be a Mermaid... this counts right?

I was having a hard time starting my search for interesting not all that common funerary practices in Canada, but then I went and looked at other blogs (hehe totally sneaky). Kayla and Jaylene had great posts so far that helped me think outside of the box. So while Jaylene had suggested burial at space I thought why not a non-standard burial at sea? Really cool results, and it led me to other options that sound really neat as well (I will post a link so if you are stuck like I was it is a pretty cool option).

What I found was the Eternal Reefs website. 

What they do is they create a living reef ball and the cremated ashes of a loved one are put inside them. They then put this reef into bays and the sea life can actually live off of them and it promotes the health of the bay as well as having an underwater resting place. Its a neat and green way of making a final resting place while promoting sea life.  Here's a link to a video if you want to know a little more information. While it is not yet offered in Canada and looks like it's mostly the southern US, it is definitely something that could be brought up here and done pretty easily.


Looking up reef memorials I also came across the Neptune Society Memorial Reef. This is just cool.

So pretty much ideal mermaid burial right???


And since I did say I was going to provide some info or at least links to other stuff if you are totally stumped, here are a few links including the option that made me take a while in deciding which topic I was actually going to do here:

• This is a link to the Daily Grommet and the post they did on Alternative Funerals.
• More specifically they mentioned Memory Glass, which is just cool and I hope someone writes about it. 

(photos are from the Eternal reef website and the Memory Glass website. Video from youtube. Links in text)

First Day

If only I could think of a witty title. I always swear I'm going to make my blogs hilarious and yet I can never think while I'm writing. Must be more creative. Hopefully these will improve as I go.

My name is Amy Polkey. I am an Anthropology Major and an English Major (all of my English requirements are done so I am all Anthro all the time, oh yeah!). I started doing Anthropology because I was really into the physical aspect (and am still really interested in Osteology) and yet I was totally taken in by the culture side of things as well. I have always had a bit of a preoccupation with things that revolve around superstitions and rituals around death. Taking the Folklore course offered at Uvic was such a blast as well.

Anthropology has become a bit of a family thing now, my brother just graduated from Uvic last year. I'm sure a few of you even had classes with him (and by now have probably noticed how familiar my last name is... Polkey is not that common. If you ever meet one chances are I am immediately related to them).  We have little nerd outs every now and then just talking about different anthro-related things we've been into recently. He doesn't live on the island anymore so now we just text and have even been planning a Skype chat just to share our nerdiness.

Well I guess that will do for now. Comment or post if you want to chat! I swear I'm a totally decent person to chat with!