Stephen,
You should look at Aries The Hour of our Death. Aries shows that the ancient (Roman) tomb
was a memorial, but that with the advent of Roman Christianity, from about the 5c AD, the tomb
became anonymous. Inscriptions of individual identity only began to reappear in the 12c, and he
reads into this the beginnings of a long historical process of individuation which sociology
conventionally assumes to be a much more recent phenomenon. Aries does quite a lot of the
kind of reading you seem to suggest and although his analysis is sometimes a bit structuralist, it
also often moves beyond those limits.
There is also quite a lot of material on 'reading' war memorials, though offhand I can't recall the
references, which might be useful for a how-to guide even if you were going to be doing more
personal memorials. Best wishes with it.
Mike Drake, UEA
I am in the process of writing my final dissertation on death and =
disposal.
Adopting a post-structural perspective, I am looking at the cemetary and =
gravestones as cultural texts. Can anyone send me useful ideas.
Thanks,
Stephen Handsley
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