Get A Hobby! Cemetery Archaology
Author: Kyla Sterling
“My office is an active cemetery. I do have some weird conversations with people about that.”
Narysse a’Jahar is a town sexton and a cemetery archaeologist, and she’d like to share her hobby with us.
What does being a cemetery sexton entail? I know that title goes way back, but could you tell me a bit of the history?
According to Wikipedia, a sexton is defined as follows: "A sexton is an officer of a church, congregation, or synagogue charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard. In smaller places of worship, this office is often combined with that of verger. In larger buildings, such as cathedrals, a team of sextons may be employed."
However, the work I do is far more accurately described by the following paragraph, also from Wikipedia:
"Historically in North America and the United Kingdom the 'sexton' was sometimes a minor municipal official responsible for overseeing the town graveyard. In the United Kingdom the position still exists today, related to management of the community's graveyard, and the sexton is usually employed by the town/parish or community council."
Normally in this part of the United States, a city/town/hamlet/etc. has a cemetery association that is in charge of everything related to the community's graveyard. However, in the town where I work, the cemetery association was dissolved in the late 1980s due to lack of interest from community residents. Since that point, the sexton for my town (technically the Cemetery Records Keeper) has been a position appointed by the town council.
How long have you been doing what you do? And how did you get started?
I have been the Cemetery Records Keeper for my town since April 2014. In undergrad, I was an intern at a museum near the university I attended, and discovered I really, really liked local history, enough to make a living at it. It was also a good way for me to satisfy my love of anthropology by studying the local communities. At that point, my brother was dating a girl whose grandmother happened to be the town historian back home, and after working at some living history events with them I asked if they needed any help at the town museum. At that point, they didn't need the help. However, in 2011 after I had just about completed my Masters in Museum Studies, the woman asked me to take over the archives at the museum. The museum is operated on a strictly volunteer basis, which means I don't get paid, but I do have the valuable archival management experience.
During my last year of grad school, the archaeology field school I attended took us to the local cemetery in the fall and had us charting gravestones on graph paper. I learned a lot of cemetery archaeology then, including how to read the ground to determine the location of graves and how old stones were just by looking at the type of stone they were made from (for example, granite stones did not come about until around the end of the American Civil War, and at that point granite was locally available just for the wealthier families. By 1900, however, people realized that marble, the stone of choice for grave markers prior to the advent of granite, does not hold up very well in the American Northeast. This is due to a variety of reasons but mostly our very wet and humid climate is to blame, particularly with acid rain being really prevalent here). I also learned a lot about tombstone iconography and how to identify and investigate maker's marks on the stones. While I didn't particularly enjoy freezing for four hours a day, two days a week in the cemetery by the university, the work I did there was crucial to what I'm doing now.
Two years later, I became a trustee of the museum I was already volunteering at. Then, when I was looking for a job after I was done with school, the town was advertising for the Cemetery Records Keeper. I applied, and was appointed the Cemetery Records Keeper.
What's your favourite aspect of the work? Anything you really don't like doing?
I think my favourite aspect of the work is that this is almost exactly associated with what I went to school for. I did all my Masters coursework in history and anthropology with a focus on Museum Studies because that's where a good chunk of the jobs are if you don't have a teaching license. I also really like the fact that I've had to learn so much about a wide variety of topics, from basic town layouts of the American Victorian period to how to look up family history via gravestones when someone needs to know about a relative. The part I really don't like doing is trying to deal with the funeral home directors around my own work schedule, because usually when I'm arranging for funerals and such I'm also doing that around a full-time job. Usually they're pretty good about not calling me during work hours, etc.
Are there any misconceptions about what you do?
My office is an active cemetery. I do have some weird conversations with people about that. Some of the funeral home directors I work with in this position still are convinced that the town has an active cemetery association. I do sometimes need to convince funeral home directors that even though technically the job is full time, it's basically an on-call job and I can't support myself on the stipend I earn from it, so I have to have another full time job. They do expect me to be able to drop what I'm doing to arrange funerals, etc. and I get back to them as soon as I can. My other bosses have all known that I have this job, and mostly have respected that sometimes I really do need to answer my mobile phone promptly and make outside phone calls at work. My mobile phone is the other part of my office, and people always know that if they need anything, I get back to them as quickly as humanly possible.
The other misconception that people have is that all the cemetery records I am in possession of are computerized. Nope nope nopity nope. It's all maps and charts and it can take a minimum of an hour to find anything. Trying to find a name can take days because nothing is computerized. My winter project this year is getting everything into a program, preferably one attached to the town website, so all we have to do is update that with new burials and hit the FIND button when we need records.
Most of my job is determined by reading the landscape and looking at things like animal damage, immediately local botany (moss has no good reason to grow in full sun unless there's a grave or disturbance of some kind), and local history documents. I've gotten really good at figuring out a lawn's history just from plants thanks to this job. At one point, I determined the placement of graves in an entire section based on woodchuck damage to a single grave in that section. If there's a doubt, I tell my gravedigger and we brainstorm to figure out how to solve a problem. Sometimes, it requires bringing in the town supervisor. But really, all we can do is proceed with caution.
What's an average day like when you're working?
There isn't really an average day for this job. When I first started, I spent the entire summer in the cemeteries I'm responsible for in an effort to get the layouts memorized and any major facts about them straight. That was where my archaeology field school work really helped me understand what was going on, and within a couple of months I had completely solved a mystery that the other town supervisors had dealt with--the location of a potters' field. Potters fields are areas where the poor and the indigents are buried, and usually the graves aren't marked. The only way we know about them otherwise is through word of mouth. I was able to use my landscape archaeology skills to solve that problem and figure out where the potters' field in the main active cemetery had been relocated to. Because I could pinpoint that accurately, now we know where the major problem areas are and where we have to be careful when opening new graves.
Usually, though, it's not that romantic. I spend a lot of my work hours for this job working with funeral home directors to arrange burials. I have all the maps to the active plots in the town, which means the directors have to call me (in some cases, they know they have to text me to get hold of me) to get burials arranged. I have a man working with me who is contracted by the town to dig the graves, and he's incredibly helpful because he's the sexton for another town. I find the plot in the maps and then I go up to the cemetery the first chance I get to mark it off. My best investment ever made for this job was a massive supply of flagging tape. My gravedigger comes up later, because usually our schedules don't match very well. He removes the flagging tape and digs the grave, then we both go back the day of the burial to answer any questions the director or the family has. I'm the only person who can accept paperwork from the funeral home directors. If the day happens to be one where I just can't get there, they know they have to mail it to the town offices. My second best investment for this job was a smartphone and a key to the town hall, so I can access email and paper records when there is a question. Cemeteries aren't really noted for their convenient location to facilities. :P
Where could someone go to learn a bit more about cemetery archaeology?
If you're interested in learning more about your local cemeteries, I highly recommend first getting in touch with your town municipal office and the cemetery association/sexton there. Do have patience and a thesis ready to present so they know what to look for--their records are probably not computerized and it may take a long time. The local historical societies will be able to help you in some way, but usually we work really closely with each other and we get forwarded cemetery inquiries that the town historian receives. In my case, I have a slight advantage because I'm also the archivist at the historical society in the town where I do the sexton work, which means I work for the town historian in that capacity. County museums/historic preservation offices will also have a lot of information available, but again, they almost always have to go through the local cemetery associations/sextons to get it for you. Finally, many cemeteries will work in conjunction with local museums to offer cemetery tours in the warmer months, but these are especially popular around Halloween.
If it's history and cemeteries in general that you're interested in, I recommend any of the Time Team episodes that deal with cemeteries and ancient burials (there are loads of them as the show was on for 20 years) for a really good grounding--the glory of this is that most of the Time Team episodes are all on YouTube and are a fantastic resource. Most of their work and preliminary theories are determined by geophysics and non-invasive techniques before putting in the test trenches.
For cemetery iconography I recommend checking out the books offered by Amazon, or see if your local history museum has any written information by local authors.
Do you have a hobby you’d like to see featured in the Tar Valon Times? Send a PM to Kyla Sterling and you could be the next subject of “Get A Hobby!”
