Mapping Historical Deathscapes in Texas

Miranda Davenport, University of Texas at Dallas
May Yuan, University of Texas at Dallas

This paper aims to identify and compare historical cemetery locations from the Texas Historical Commission’s (THC) Historic Sites Atlas database and Google Maps website data, recognize discrepancies, examine differences, and analyze factors contributing to cemetery risks. R software acquires cemetery locations from the Google Places API and Google Place Details API search, stores them as tables, and compares with the THC Atlas database. Cemeteries link the past, present, and future for a deathscape the living can pass through time in remembrance while they face their own mortality, mourn the dead, and attempt to heal from loss (Harke, 2001). Increasing populations, expanding urbanization, and various sociocultural factors have placed numerous historic cemeteries of varying sizes throughout Texas, USA at risk from neglect, destruction, vandalism, and construction. Diminishing historical cemeteries is greatly concerning with the use of family plots, section boundaries, grave markers, and the inclusion or exclusion of groups mimicking the societal structure of the living (Warner, 1959). Historical, archaeological, and cross-cultural comparisons using this societal structure and material artifacts as symbolic representations for the dead propounds ideas on sociotemporal views towards positions of power based on such factors as grave access, cemetery layout, and body orientation. Unlike the higher classes, the average person lacked historical written records before the prevalence of social media. A person’s headstone being their sole record, its loss can destroy their identity by eliminating context from the human remains, severing ties to living descendants, and erasing their existence from history. This presentation reports the initial analysis of the project. Geospatial analysis characterizes sites common to both sources and unique to one in an R environment. Expected results give increasing risk assessments for cemeteries associated with multiple names, lower socioeconomic status, underrepresented groups, multiple ownership, segregation, unmarked graves, and geographic vulnerability in an urban development context.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 59. Unearthing the Past with Historical GIS Data: Sourcing, Visualizing, Interpreting