Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead by Roger Lockhurst
Was Stonehenge “a sacred place for visiting the dead?” asks Roger Lockhurst in Graveyards. The famous English standing stones have been claimed for many purposes, including astronomy and Druidic rites, and remain, the author contends, as “sites for fantasy and the projection of contested meanings.” But it might be no coincidence that Stonehenge sits amidst 300 burial mounds.
In his enjoyably erudite account, the British historian doesn’t confine his thoughts to the UK but ranges across the world to understand the many ways the dead have been cared for and remembered. Burial sites may have begun with our hominid ancestors, some 600,000 years ago, albeit Lockhurst is always careful to distinguish speculation from known facts. “How these remains are interpreted often speaks more to our contemporary concerns, read into the barest traces of the physical record,” he writes. Mummification? According to Lockhurst, the earliest evidence dates from Chile, c. 7000 BCE, before the practice was cultivated in Egypt.
In the ruins of early civilizations in Palestine and Turkey, archeologists have found necropolises, sites housing the bones, often the skulls, of the dead. Lockhurst covers the tombs of Mesopotamia and the pyramids of Egypt, the funeral practices of ancient Greece and Rome, before summarizing the diversity within Judaism, Christianity and Islam and setting course for Hindu and Buddhist burials and beliefs. Native Americans aren’t ignored, nor the customs of the modern West. Lockhurst pays special heed to the many cemeteries of his London hometown.
During the past two centuries, many primeval practices have been given a modern context. The idea of preserving an eminent corpse as a pilgrimage site is given full display at Lenin’s Tomb. Monumental structures honoring national heroes? Look no further than Grant’s Tomb in New York. During the 20th century, cremation spread from East and South Asia into the common practices of the West. There has also been a push toward egalitarian gravesites, notably Britain’s Imperial War Graves, sheltering the casualties of World War I with rows of simple white markers, identical save for names and religious symbols.
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Richly illustrated with tombs and relics of all sorts, Graveyards travels beyond the cemetery gates to contemplate a variety of human experience with death, from Mexico’s Santa Muerte sect to the techno-prophets of cheating death through Cryonics and other dubious means. Lockhurst is wary of the “dark tourism” associated with gawking at the tombs and rites of those considered “other” by Western society but is generally agnostic in his commentary. “For all the different practices that different faiths have evolved to manage this rupture in life, placing death within the structures of the world’s faiths can show chimes and echoes as much as unfamiliar customary divergences,” he concludes.
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