Evocative photographs and essay illuminate early American gravestones Gravestones are colonial America's earliest sculpture and they provide a unique physical link to the European people who settled here. Carved in Stone book is an elegant collection of over 80 fine duotone photographs, each a personal meditation on an old stone carving, and on New England's past, where these stones tell stories about death at sea, epidemics such as small pox, the loss of children, and a grim view of the afterlife. The essay is a graceful narrative that explores a long personal involvement with the stones and their placement in New England landscape, and attempts to trace the curious and imperfectly documented story of carvers. Brief quotes from early New England writers accompany the images, and captions provide basic information about each stone. These meditative portraits present an intimate view of figures from New England graveyards and will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Americana and fine art photography.

In Puritan New England, with its abiding concern for things not of this world and its distrust of forms and ceremonies, one art flourished: the symbolic art of mortuary monument stonecarvers. This carefully researched, beautifully illustrated work was the first to consider this art in depth as a meaningful aesthetic-spiritual expression. It is reissued for today's readers, with a new preface outlining changes in the field since the book appeared in 1966.

In this richly illustrated volume, art historian Peggy McDowell and folklorist Richard E. Meyer blend their respective disciplinary perspectives, along with their shared long-standing fascination with cemeteries and funerary material culture, to provide a thoroughgoing descriptive analysis of this dramatic chapter in the history of American memorial art.

his interdisciplinary reference work presents a linked consideration, to the reader, of physical- cultural (physicocultural) representations of headstones located in urban churchyards in England and Scotland. The geomorphology of landscapes relevant to these locations is explained with the help of detailed case studies from Oxford and Edinburgh. The integrated physicocultural approach addresses the conservation of the archaeological record and presents a cross-temporal perspective of landscape change – of the headstones as landforms in their landscape (as part of deathscapes). The physical record (of headstones) is examined in the context of both cultural representation and change. In this way, an integrated approach is employed that connects the physical (natural) and cultural (social) records kept by historians and archeologists over the years. Changing Landscapes in Urban British Churchyards is of interest to geomorphologists, historians and scholars interested in understanding landscaping studies and cultural nuance of specific historical urban sites in England and Scotland.