The picture to the left doesn’t seem like it’s of much except maybe a few unmaintained grave sites, when it’s actually of an entire cemetery. We had driven over two hours from Salem to look at a couple mortuary sites on a farmhouse property a family had purchased, a common find on properties in the southwest Virginia region. As I’ve learned is usually the case, if a resident knows of one unrecorded archaeological site then they know of others. While the mortuary sites on the family’s property were interesting, the conversation the roadside cemetery pictured captured my attention the most that day. The cemetery would’ve been left unnoticed had a logging company not bought the land. When they found a few headstones, the logging company arbitrarily marked perimeters off with unmarked roadways but most likely destroyed or failed to notice that the cemetery extended further. The rural nature of southwest Virginia means archaeological sites regularly go unnoticed until new landowners come in – whether they may be a company or residents. Tom, my supervisor, explained to us the tell tale signs of a cemetery in the region that we quickly picked up to determine that the roadside cemetery was probably larger than the logging company presumed.
The most obvious indicator of a mortuary site is the presence of a headstone, and – in many cases – a foot stone. The foot stone is uncommon for slave burials since they were usually only marked with a found stone stuck into the ground at the head of the burial. The type of headstone and foot stone depends entirely on the period and individual family preferences. The second most obvious indicator for burials is a depression in the ground from where the soil settled over time. Sealing burials with a concrete casing that prevents the soil from settling unevenly with the undisturbed soil is a modern practice. Another indicator is the growth of periwinkle. Periwinkle is a ground cover that spreads quickly, especially in shady areas. Oak and cedar trees were usually planted around the perimeter to create that shade. Boxwood shrubs and decorative iron fences were popular during certain periods too.
We had made the drive though primarily to study two mortuary sites on the family’s new property. One of the mortuary sites was a small fenced off area deep into the woods from the family that once owned the farmhouse for generations, while the other was a pair of graves in by the stream not far from the house. Both were in wooded areas though. The latter pair would be unassuming to most people because their headstones lacked any markings or shape – they were just thinner rocks stuck vertically in the ground. They were slave burials and an excavation could have possibly revealed more where the headstones were no longer there. There were no depressions in the soil to indicate to us either way. The fenced in cemetery had less than a dozen graves and had the traditional indicators, including the periwinkle, boxwood shrubs, and Victorian iron fence despite having been unmaintained for decades. Interestingly, there was a depression on the outside of the fenced area but it was unclear why.
I must have pulled over twenty ticks off of me that day and the heat was miserable because we had to be covered head to toe since we were in the woods. But I learned that the internship is going to involve working with people of all walks of life and trusting them when they say follow me because they know their land better than any outsider archaeologist ever will.
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