Category Archives: Louisiana Graveyard Woman

CHAPTER 2: Through the Looking Glass

As settlement patterns change, both traditional cemeteries and Memorial Parks are impacted. The choices made in selecting locations for cemeteries change through time and are subject to changing social conditions. Attributing cemetery abandonment to one factor with a simple and … Continue reading

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CHAPTER 1: (Continued) The Missing Dead

Traditional cemeteries have a harmonious relationship with their surrounding features when first established. But continuously evolving landscapes due to land use modifications over time results in and out-of-place relationships between earlier established Traditional cemeteries and more recently established infrastructural, such … Continue reading

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CHAPTER 1: (Continued) A Place for the Dead

Deconsecration of burial grounds has gone on for centuries in urban areas. Indeed, in urban centers where land use demand is greatest the number of unmarked human burials yet to be uncovered during subsurface construction may exceed the living population. … Continue reading

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CHAPTER 1: City of the Dead

“2,000 dead may lie beneath Canal Blvd.” declares a Times-Picayune headline (Figure 1). During a drainage and paving project, a New Orleans’ construction crew uncovered thousands of unmarked burials along a three block section of Canal Boulevard. Splintered coffins, scattered … Continue reading

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The Times they are a Changing (segment 7)

Beginning in 1997, those I loved and depended on for companionship were dying in rapid succession. 12 years old, Pete died from kidney failure likely due to drinking coolant that rose with the water table every time it rained – … Continue reading

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Segregation in Life as in Death (segment 6)

Notably, so called black cemeteries that were abandoned because those “folks just don’t care” was disproven. When the plantations folded during the depression, auctioned off and petrochemical plants took over the land – especially along the transportation corridor of the … Continue reading

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People are Strange when You Are a Stranger (segment 5)

I had some of the most interesting encounters as I visited graveyards in Louisiana or did research at various archives. Upon leaving a newspaper office where I was researching historic articles, after a news cast on Christmas Eve described my … Continue reading

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LSU is the Berkeley of the South (segment 4)

Dr. Deetz had introduced me to Glassie’s analysis of folk housing and other material culture anlaysis of the South. Glassie was influenced by Fred Kniffen who had been a professor at LSU until his death. The faculty at LSU’s department … Continue reading

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Academic Challenges (segment 3)

At the age of 35, I applied to Northern Arizona University’s Anthropology program to study archaeology and was accepted for entrance Fall 1992 – once again another recession was leveling the middle class in California and I entered the wave … Continue reading

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Macabre Tendencies (Segment 2)

Death Heads and Cherubs In the late 1970s, I followed the Gringo Trail through Mexico into Guatemala and Belize. I had visited most of the major Mayan sites, including Tikal and at Pelanque had an opportunity to participate stone carving … Continue reading

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