Abstract
Social and economic factors significantly influenced grave-marker choice in southern California cemeteries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gradual changes in the American way of death since Victorian times underwent punctuated shifts in mortuary attitudes, commemoration practices, and funerary materials following moments of extreme social and economic duress. While the form of gravestones slowly evolved from large monuments to smaller flush markers during the late 1800s and early 1900s, they collectively experienced a pronounced shift during the 1920s, reflecting American responses to the devastating human losses of World War I and the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. Financial conditions directly affected decisions regarding those materials selected to mark the deceased as well. Although overall trends reveal that granite gravestones gradually replaced marble as the marker of choice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pronounced fiscal struggles during the 1907 Bankers’ Panic and the Great Depression were evinced in distinct surges in less expensive marble and metal grave markers.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many San Diego State University (SDSU) students who have participated in the San Diego Gravestone Project, including two field schools during the spring of 2003 and the summer of 2004. The field work benefited from an SDSU 2003–04 Faculty Grant-in-Aid (Fund #242152). In addition, we are indebted to many of the employees of the South Coastal Information Center for their diligence in fieldwork, data entry, and digitization. SDSU President Stephen Weber, Provost Nancy Marlin, Dean Paul Wong, and Department of Anthropology Administrative Coordinator Kathleen Peck have also provided important support to this work. Most of all, we wish to express our appreciation to so many of the San Diego County community members who have shared their wisdom and passion for the local past, identified lost and forgotten cemeteries, and reminded us that the path to the future cannot compromise the legacy of the past. This article is dedicated to Andrew Crapol (1978–2009), an exceptional friend.
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Mallios, S., Caterino, D.M. Mortality, Money, and Commemoration: Social and Economic Factors in Southern California Grave-Marker Change During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Int J Histor Archaeol 15, 429–460 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-011-0152-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-011-0152-z