Spade & the Grave

death and burial through an archaeological lens

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Posts that don’t quite fit into a category all their own.


by 1 Comment

Tales from the Trenches: Fieldwork Week 2, 2017 (or, why does this keep happening?)

Halfway through through the fieldwork season, and I already cannot believe the amount of earth we’ve moved in pursuit of the burial ground! It’s amazing, thank you to the week 1 & 2 crews for all the hard work you put in, I couldn’t have gotten this far without all of you (and your digging hands)!

It was an amazing week over all, so lets dive right in to what we got up to at Ferryland last week:

blog2_3

17th-century building rubble from the brewhouse dismantling. We found lots of early-mid-17th-century objects between the fallen stones, as well as rich organic soil, charcoal, burned bones, and other organic material. Photo by author, 2017.

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Tales from the Trenches: Fieldwork Week 1, 2017.

It’s time.
The trowels are cleaned*, the boots are dusted off**, and the car is ready and full of excited and bright eyed volunteers***. The fieldwork season has begun!

*it’s never really going to be clean again, is it?
**Same goes for the boots, they are as dusty as ever
*** No one is that bright eyed at 6:30AM!

If you remember from my last post, I had indicated where I was going to be excavating this summer by a large circle on the map. Of course, I’m not going to be digging literally all of the space inside that circle but a few select trenches to get a better idea of what is going on in the subsurface.

20170704_094258

The first trench laid out over the gravel slope. It’s mostly slopewash and debris from above, and parts of the area were previously excavated so the ground lever was actually much higher than it currently appears to be! Photo by author, 2017.

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Search for the 17th-century Ferryland burial ground, 2017: Introduction

Tomorrow is the day! The 2017 excavation at Ferryland is finally going to start and I couldn’t be more excited! (That’s a lie, I will be more excited when I get on site tomorrow). I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you all a bit more about this year’s excavation and where I am taking it for the next 4 weeks. I’ll be blogging every week about the latest adventures and finds as well and I hope you all come along for the ride!

RL_Ferryland_Map_Overview

Map made by Robyn Lacy & Bryn Tapper, 2017.

This is a map I made under the guidance of Bryn Tapper, a PhD candidate in my department who knows way more about GIS that I do! It’s an aerial photo of the Ferryland harbour, centered on the 17th-century British settlement area in the Pool, with a later, known burial ground circled in red on the left side of the image. The Pool refers to that little curl of land in the middle of the image, which formed naturally, if you can believe it! It’s the perfect little protected harbour, and deep enough to bring ships into, making it a wonderful location for a small settlement 400 years ago.
Continue reading →


by 6 Comments

One Common Skull – A case study at Old Burying Point, Salem, MA.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting some of the historic burial grounds in Salem, Massachusetts during my recently holiday to the area. I was particularly excited to visit Salem because it was not only an important site in the history of colonial New England, but it was a part of the survey I did of settlements for my MA research so getting to see it in person was a real treat! I decided to use the opportunity as a case study to investigate a particularly popular gravestone design.
June28_1 Continue reading →


by 13 Comments

‘Guilford’s Town Greene’ – a vanished 17th-century burial landscape in Connecticut

The alternate title to this post is: ‘Guilford’s Town Greene’ – The burial ground that if you give me a moment, I will never stop talking about’. If you’ve heard me speak at a conference or lecture, or…ever… you’ve probably heard me use it an an example of a curious burial landscape, one that has seen endless change, interaction, and ultimately erasure. It’s a very interesting case study in the changing views of death in Western society as well, so if you’re here for the modern death aspect, read on!
guildford1
Continue reading →


by 1 Comment

Living History Radio Interview: Headstones, Hexfoils, and Historical Archaeology

Interview

First time in a radio studio! Photo from @ICH_NL

Recently I was invited to come chat about my research on colonial burial landscapes on the radio show / podcast ‘Living Heritage’. The show, hosted by Dale Jarvis and broadcast on CHMR – 95.3 FM (and apparently other radio stations across Canada, you might just hear me talking about graves out of the blue), focuses on people which cultural heritage in many different capacities.

This was my first radio interview, and my first time seeing a microphone that is kind of suspended in front of your face in real life! I’m more excited about that than I should be.. but it was such a cool experience, and I had a ton of fun recording the episode with Dale! We mostly talked about my research and some of the topics that I’ve discussed here on the blog with you guys, hexfoils, stone importation to Newfoundland, etc. Death and Burial sorts of things!

Without further adieu, you can listen to the full episode by  CLICKING HERE!

You can also visit the ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ Blog and read about / listen to the interview HERE.

IMG_-pfiaa7

Gotta have a selfie to commemorate. Thanks for having me on the show!


by 1 Comment

Temporary Graves – Burial in Luxembourg & the Transmortality Conference 2017

I recently had the honour of presenting some of my research at the Transmortality Conference in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. The conference dealt with the themes of materiality and spatiality of death and dying historically and in modernity, and as my research mainly deals with spatial aspects of burial landscapes, I was beyond excited to attend and present at the conference, and chat with like-minded researchers from all over the world!
20170302_130827
The Transmortality project is being conducted by Université du Luxembourg, and if you’re interested in their work, there will be a special issue of the journal Mortality coming out on the theme in 2019. More information on the project can be found here: https://transmortality.uni.lu/
Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

Weekend Death Reads (1)

booksLast week was hectic, hence the lack of posts (sorry everyone!) but I promise my absence will lead to some really interesting posts in the next week or so that I’m really excited to share as soon as I can! In the mean time, I thought I would do a slightly less academic post on this fine Saturday evening and talk about some death / burial / mortality books that I’ve been enjoying lately, or obsessing over and recommending to everyone who comes near me over the last few weeks.

Continue reading →


by 8 Comments

Death & Commemoration at Ferryland – What we know so far.

I did say that my next post was going to be about the Ferryland gravestones, so here we are! Before I can get into the stone analysis bit though, we first need to discuss death at Ferryland.

Ferryland had long been known as a good harbour before the establishment of the 1621 settlement. In fact, there have been Beothuk hearths found at Ferryland, but their relationship (if any) with migratory European fishermen prior to the settlement being founded is unknown. The natural spit that juts out into the water creates a protected harbour, breaking waves and keeping boats sheltered from the harsh Atlantic storms. It was a natural place for people to want to live, and to die.
IMG_4664 Continue reading →