I was notified recently of a new book detailing the cultural importance of preserving African-American cemeteries. This book focuses on cemeteries in Central Virginia, but promises to be an interesting read for those interested in the importance of preserving cemeteries. Below is the write-up sent to me:
Lynn Rainville’s book is Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia (University of Virginia Press) is now available. In
addition to preserving African-American cemeteries for future generations,
funerary traditions, gravestones, and cemetery landscapes illustrate past
attitudes towards death and community. Because of the historical importance of
mortuary landscapes, cemeteries provide a window into past family networks, gender
relations, religious beliefs, and local neighborhoods. In this project we take
an interdisciplinary approach, combing anthropological, archaeological,
historical, oral historical, sociological, geological, and environmental
techniques and theories. These combined perspectives are necessary to
understand the cultural and environmental context of historic black cemeteries
and uncover the rich cultural and religious traditions that produced these
sacred sites.
Lynn Rainville
received her PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology in 2001. After a decade of work in
Turkey, she returned to an earlier research interest, historic cemeteries. She
has taught anthropology and archaeology courses at the University of Michigan,
Dartmouth College, University of Virginia, and Sweet Briar College. Her
research interests range from slave cemeteries to war memorials, from
segregated schools to historic architecture, from enslaved communities on
antebellum plantations to rural neighborhoods, and from town poor farms to
urban life in the 19th-century. Her work has been supported by numerous grants,
from the National Science Foundation to the National Endowment for the
Humanities, from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities to the Wenner Gren
Foundation, and from various private donors.
