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Gravestones 2

These images show how changes continued in the 18th century. (Be patient while they load. They are fairly large so you can see some details of the inscriptions.)

This gravestone shows a face with ray-like wings.
The next one also shows a face with wings.
This stone shows a winged head.
This stone is the last in this sequence. The head has no wings, but does have stylized wreath underneath and the interesting motif of a pair of scizzors. They symbolize the cutting off the deceased's life, i. e. his death.


This gravestone shows a face with ray-like wings.
	The next one also shows a face with wings.
This stone shows a winged head.
	This stone is the last in this sequence. The head has no wings, but does have stylized wreath underneath and the interesting motif of a pair of scizzors. They symbolize the cutting off the deceased's life, i. e. his death.

Gravestone Rubbings

You will need permission for this activity from the cemetery administrator--and you will need to closely supervise the students engaged in it.

Find a gravestone whose inscription is no longer legible. Explain to your students that archaeologists make rubbings to help them read illegible inscriptions. Take a sheet of butcher block paper, tape the corners of it to the stone with masking tape, and gently rub a piece of graphite over the stone until the inscription becomes legible. (It will be a negative image.) Practice this before you visit the cemetery on--say--an old school desk covered with carved student graffiti.

Divide the students into several groups and let them do their own rubbings of other stones. Take their finished products back to the class room, spray them with artists fixative, and use them for your posters. Themes your students might focus on include:

Gravestone epitaths
Graveyard picnics
"Family rooms" (family plots typically marked by a symbolic enclosure such as a border of flat stones)
Competition for elaborate and expensive gravestones
Flowers (a material gesture in cemeteries symbolizing the connection between the living and their deceased friends and relatives)

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