It Would be GOOD to Make a Point…

Hundreds of articles are published every day across all disciplines focusing on almost any topic available. Nothing is off limits for the devout scholar. We can truly take nothingness and conflate it into the most grandiose story ever told, or take valid data points and skew them to support something they don’t quite prove, or have so much data we shift a paradigm.

Historical cemetery studies specifically often suffers from one main issue – having a lot of information, and not much to say with it. Of course, these articles are still over ten pages long and create a lot of descriptive-discovery type work, but they often lack a point an argument, a reason the study was to be undertaken in the first place. This is exemplified by the work of Harold Mytum in his work “Welsh Cultural Identity in Nineteenth-Century Pembrokeshire; The Pedimented Headstone as a Graveyard Monument.”

Here, Mytum looks at twelve Anglican and non-denominational churchyards and assesses that pediment style stones were used to display class status and independent or group identities in Pembrokeshire. But Mytum never makes an argument. He does not specify why he chooses to look at pediment styles for this article, or why he believes this style may be used for these purposes (aside from height, but other shapes of stone also make use of size). He briefly mentions gender may lead to decorative changes and that middle-class families favour this stone shape, but never elaborates. Why would the middle class be proud enough of their status to display it? Why may gender make a difference and how does it present? A mere mention of these points of interest is made before he swiftly moves on. Overall, this work reads like a compilation of leftover data he wished to make use of for a new publication as opposed to a work that had merit of its own. It seemed he had no inherent purpose or question for the publication, and he fails to make any real points or state why these findings are of any value to academia.

Another honourary mention is the aritcle “Gravestone Iconography and Mortuary Ideology” by Frederick Gorman and Michael DiBlasi. Looking from the 18th to early 19th century context in South Carolina and Georgia, the paper focuses on gravestone iconography and how it can communicate social attitudes, religiosity, and economic status. The study utilizes a total of 311 gravestones dated between 1710 and 1829 from a total of six civilian cemeteries. Gorman and DiBlasi look at religion, monument erection, gravestone (and associated mortuary ideology) dispersion, migration, and motif. They have no shortage of data presented in their paper, but in nineteen pages fail to synthesize any of it into an argument, a point, a ‘this is why you should care! This is why we did it!’ and that seems to be the most consistent failure with historical gravestone scholarship – there is no reason behind the data collection, no thesis, and no question or answer.

Conversely, historical cemetery studies is a ripe playground to do whatever one wants to do and study whatever wants to study to come up with an answer to any kind of question one can image. You can absolutely make these assertions, be they on a grander or more local scale. Are they always correct in perpetuity? No. Often, things are reworked and disproven – seen in the famous case of Deetz and Dethlefsen whereby they asserted changes in tombstone iconography were due to the Great Awakening, which was later challenged by those such as Richard Veit. However, to not make a claim is almost a failure of an academic. I feel as though using data for a clear cut reason should be the reason we collect it, the reason we publish on it. Simply saying “this is that” of course preserves findings, but it is the job of the archaeologist to provide meaning. Harold Mytum is also an example of this in “Mortality Symbols in Action Protestant and Catholic Memorials in Early Eighteenth-Century West Ulster.”

Here, Mytum splits his findings into time periods, as well as Catholics and Protestants. All of his assertions are well cited, he makes mention of symbol frequency and combinations of icons most likely to be seen on a stone, and then proceeds to address the influence a stone carver may have had on iconography themselves. He even begins with a broad overview of the power of symbology and commemoration as well as delving into the historical views of the religious sects on death, dying, and mortuary commemoration. The end of the article is a conclusion which works as a short summary of all key points he has made in the paper. He concludes religion was the most significant structuring principle of identity which led to the division in commemorative practices.

Even in the aforementioned, Mytum does not make the strongest case for a thesis or argument, but he writes it so well with so much research and backstory that one can see a point, he was comparing what factors led to these commemorative differences – for what reason? I’m not sure. But it is well written and researched. This is a trend for him, as in “Explaining Stylistic Changes in Mortuary Material Culture; The Dynamic of Power Relations between the Bereaved and the Undertaker” Mytum offers little to no real data. He simply writes and researches in such an intuitive way that you can follow the story he tells. He offers enough in the way of decorative evolution in regards to symbology on both gravestones and coffins (and contrasts the two) that the reader never questions his logic. Mytum determines that overall, coffins lagged behind monuments in stylistic change, and were much more prone to the continual use of identical motifs. Contrarily, monuments were subject to many trend changes from small scale localities to the country scale, with tons of variation potential. He links this to the different emotional vulnerabilities of the bereaved overtime, and thus involvement (or lack thereof) of the undertaker in coffin and monument selection. And this simply makes sense.

While these latter two articles may also be ‘bad’ in some ways, but he makes a point, and he makes it logically. A lot can be said for solid writing and research. Gorman and DiBlasi (and Mytum in “Welsh”) offer up data, but make nothing of it. One needs to be compelled by writing, seduced by the flow of ideas, comforted by the assertions that make sense and the data can come secondarily to back up already solid, sensical assertions. A ‘good’ and ‘bad’ article are one step away from becoming one another, and as evidenced by Mytum, an author can toe that line very closely. Having a point, a case to be made is the most important part of an article. You can have all the data in the world, but if you cannot tell your audience what story it tells, no one will care to listen.