What is interesting about this piece is that I have had to work with headstones before. However, for that project I was identifying the rock type the headstones around Fredericksburg were made out of for a geology class. What is interesting is you can see a change over the years in not only the style but also the material. As carvers began realizing which stones worked better for graves the material slowly would change, and thus the style would change slightly.
Tags: hist299moon
Materials that was better to be worked with, but I also feel as though it would be important to the carver about the availability of the stone. It would be interesting to see if different people got different materials for their gravestone depending on rank, sex, class, etc.
When I went up to Gettysburg, I noticed that the gravestones were not similar as to the ones that Deetz mentions in his book. But, Professor Moon answered my question regarding why were the soldiers tombstones different than the ones a century ago. People viewed death differently, and I never noticed that. I found your comment about gravestones quite fascinating, and I enjoyed reading this article because I did not have a lot of information about gravestone carvings.