Pet Cemetery

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Undoubtedly there is good reason why archaeologists value human burials as one of the most valuable finds in the sense that they have the potential to tell us so much about the conditions under which the individual came to be buried in a certain way. Archaeologists can look at grave goods, the type of vessel for the deceased, body positioning, the number of individuals in a grave, and the location of a grave and its proximity to other burials to speculate about the individual’s role(s) and status. A common theme that I have noticed in many of our class discussions is the idea that perhaps these things say more about the person or people doing the burial than they necessarily do about the individual(s) in the grave. In short, people don’t get to bury themselves. I think that we can get much of the value from intentional animal burials that we can get from human ones.

I started thinking about this in relation to personal experiences and conversations with people about the treatment of pets after they die. Particularly in the context of many modern societies I think that pet burials could speak enormously to the attachment that many people feel to their pets, an attachment that is not dissimilar to that which we see in many human burials past and present.

Many of my thoughts on this topic stem from the death of my pet budgie last summer. Although he cost under $30, Felix was a definite and long-term presence in the apartment that I share with my significant other, and his death was fairly sad. This was the first time I ever witnessed my boyfriend actually crying, a reaction that I certainly didn’t expect (luckily he doesn’t read this blog). I taught him (the bird that is, not the boyfriend) to wolf whistle and say “how are you?” and the apartment was eerily silent after he died. Needless to say, Felix didn’t get tossed in the dumpster like any old chicken. We wrapped him lovingly in a t-shirt and took him to nearby Summit Park to bury him. We fully intended to bury him with his favourite toy but realised when we got there that we had left them at home, and frankly it’s a damn steep walk back up from the apartment.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if some future people found our little birdie grave they could ask some of the same questions about us as if they found our bigger person grave (just kidding…we hid that one way better). Archaeologists could tell that we valued our pet enough to make the effort to bury him, that (pretending that we had brought the toys) we felt it symbolically appropriate to bury him with a little bell and a mirror, and that we owned Fruit of the Loom t-shirts.

The symbolic treatment of deceased animals has an ancient history and is certainly not just limited to modern situations. A short news release in the July, 2004 issue of Archaeology informs of a 9,500 year old wildcat burial on Cyprus (Neolithic) which was found feet away from the grave of what is thought to be a high status individual. The cat is orientated symmetrically to the human with both of their heads facing west. Searjeantson and Morris (2011) describe the deliberate burials of crows and ravens at Iron Age and Roman sites in Britain. Additionally, I recall reading about bear worship by Neanderthals, a very old dog burial at a Native American site in Orange County, California, and small animal tombs (yaokeng) placed beneath the waist region in Chinese human burials.

Anyway, I apologise for the length of this post. Got a little carried away I guess. Basically what I was trying to say was that perhaps human burials are not the “be all and end all” of archaeological value when it comes to interments of the dead. Furthermore, I think that modern pet cemeteries (and there are some enormous ones with up to 70,000 burials) would definitely tell archaeologists a thing or two about our own society.

2004 Man’s Best Friends. Archaeology 57(4): 14-14.
Searjentson, D., and J. Morris. 2011 Ravens and Crows in Iron Age and Roman Britain. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 30(1): 85-107.

Children's Graves at the Jewish Cemetery, Victoria BC

We did our monument analysis at the Jewish Cemetery in Victoria at the corner of Fernwood Rd. and Cedar Hill Rd. We decided to narrow our focus to include the graves of children in the cemetery. There are six children buried in the Jewish Cemetery: Adele Meiss (6 months old), Grace Meiss (2 years and 10 months old), Rebecca Harris (6 months old), Annie Moss (under 1 year old), George Lancaster (4 months old), Issac A. Fried (9 years old).


View Anthropolgy 392 Memorial Project in a larger map

In doing the project, we asked the following 3 research questions:

1. Why are there so few child graves in the Jewish Cemetery?
2. Why was the last child interred in 1916 when the cemetery has been in constant use until the present?
3. Where are the rest of the children buried?

We had a number of ideas about what might be the answers to these questions, and were able to confirm them fairly confidently. To do this we contacted a member of Victoria's Jewish community, Rabbi Kaplan. We found this to be an effective way of addressing our questions about children in the Jewish Cemetery.

Initially we hypothesized that the low number of child interments, and the fact that the most recent one is dated 1916, is likely due to the fact that infant mortality rates have declined quite a bit over the past century. As shown by Statistics Canada, since 1926 infant mortality has dropped from over a hundred to around five children per 1,000 (Statistics Canada 2007). Furthermore, there is not a huge population of Jewish people in Victoria today so the likelihood of a child dieing and being Jewish is fairly low.

Rabbi Kaplan was able to confirm what we initially thought about child graves in the Jewish Cemetery, and to give us some more detailed information. He explained that, since Victoria's Jewish population is so small, many of the Jewish people in Victoria have extended family in some of Canada's larger cities (and I would assume even abroad) where a child's body would be sent to be buried so as not to be buried in a cemetery without any relatives. This can be considered alongside the Jewish Federations and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism websites' pages about death practices, which describe mourning as a community practice (Jewish Federations of North America 2011, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism 2010). Furthermore, only about 10 people are buried in Victoria's Jewish Cemetery per year and these are usually adults who have strong roots or connections in Victoria, and whose families see no need to send their bodies elsewhere.

Through looking at the children's graves at the Victoria Jewish Cemetery, discussing what questions they brought to mind for us, and contacting a member of Victoria's Jewish community, our group was able to carry out our small project to the end that we answered our research questions fairly definitively. In the end we were able to confirm that not many children have been buried in the cemetery, and none since 1916, because of dropping infant mortality rates and a small Jewish community in Victoria.

Bibliography:

The Jewish Federations of North America
2011 Jewish Funeral Customs: Saying Goodbye to a Loved One. http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=937, accessed February 11, 2011.

Statistics Canada
2007 Infant, Neonatal and Early Neonatal Mortality Rates in Canada, 1926-2005. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-003-x/2007001/figures/4129861-eng.htm, accessed February 11, 2011.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
2010 Guide to Jewish Funeral Practice. http://www.uscj.org/guide_to_jewish_fune6211.html, accessed February 11, 2011.

Biopresence Trees

A search of 'alternatives to cremation and burial' led me to the website of Biopresence, an 'art venture' concept by U.K and Japanese artists/scientists Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel. Biopresence makes 'Human DNA Trees' as 'living memorials' or 'transgenic tombstones'. In short they "introduce human characteristics into a plant, without changing the genes of the resulting plant." My first thought was...

...however, after reading through the website it became clear that Human DNA Trees are so not that cool.

Basically through some sciencey mambo jumbo that can be best explained with: Agrobacterium tumefaciens, blah blah blah, crown-galls, yadda yadda yadda, DNA manifold, transhuman-plant gene, and so on and so forth, you get a tree that has some human stuff in it. The Biopresence website, which seems to be under construction and doesn't give any information about how you can go about procuring your transgenic tombstone or how much it will cost (a lot, I bet), explains the process with the following useful diagram:

 

Ooooookay it all makes  perfect sense to me now.

So what do you get when all is said and done? A tree that looks and acts exactly like every single other tree out there. What. A. Concept. The one question on my mind is: why? Whatever happened to being satisfied with planting a normal, Home Depot variety willow to memorialize your loved one symbolically?

I suppose there would be some value here to archaeologists in that maybe they could see whose families were the types to get them made into trees. Then perhaps you could date the approximate time of death based on the tree rings. You could also say something about areas where there are high numbers of these trees. I don't think you could make many other conclusions about an individual based on this type of memorial since there would be no body, coffin, grave goods, etc.

OMG, I just had a thought! What if you made your deceased into a fruit tree, would that be freaky or what? Then if you were a crazy lady you might start selling your late husband's apples at the farmer's market or something and nobody would know.

My Grave Goods

This is the assemblage that would be found in my grave if I had it my way.

1. Pig - A large ceramic pig that found me at Value Village.

2. Ukulele - So my Tutu (Hawaiian for grandma) can teach me to play it in the afterlife, which will presumably take place on a white sandy beach.

3. Pillow Case - Stolen from a club in a state of impaired judgment. Carries fond memories...and a kind of freaky stain.

4. Ancestral Beer Bottle - Yeah, I'm related to that guy on the beer bottle (William Naukana, first Hawaiian settler on Saltspring Island and rumored royal descendant).

5. Fancy Pants Tea Cup (and Twinings Lady Grey tea bag) - The cup is part of a collection from my Nana. Symbolic of my deep love of tea and dainty china.

6. Family Jewels - Inherited sparkly things so future people will think I'm more important than I am.

7. Set of Keys - Because I can't find their owner, and for some reason can't get rid of them.

8. Deck of Cards - I like card games, and also might want to pass the time with solitaire in the afterlife.

9. Tibetan Singing Bowl - Because it's neat and I like it.

10. Decorative Owls - (see #9)

11. Vintage Clock and Opal Necklace - I wear it a lot, and I like it a lot, and it shows that I was stylish and on time.

12. Croquet Mallet - Because I like a good croquet match.

13. On the Road by Jack Kerouac - Like lots of my other grave goods, I wouldn't expect this to last many years underground, but it's beloved by me and was gifted to me by a friend.

14. Zinger Head Massager - THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER. The archaeologists who excavate my grave will really appreciate it.

Introduction

My name is Melia and this is my blog for UVic's Anthropology 392 class "Beyond the Grave: The Archaeology of Death." I am in my fourth year of my undergraduate degree and will graduate with my BA in Anthropology next December. After a break from school I hope to further my education with a social work degree, where I feel my anthropology background will be useful.

I am in this class because I enjoyed the last class I took with Erin, and also because I find interesting the ways peoples' attitudes toward the dead vary with time and location.