Burial and Death in Colonial North America: Exploring Interment Practices and Landscapes in 17th-Century British Settlements

by Robyn S. Lacy

While late 17th- and 18th-century burial grounds of colonial North America are frequently the subject of research, wide-scale studies of 17th-century burial landscapes are often the less documented aspect of these sites. This book aims to fill some of that gap by exploring the relationships and organization of early British colonial burial grounds within the context of their own settlements and the wider northeast coast. Early settlers immigrated to North America for many reasons, and there, away from the Church of England, they could freely explore their relationship with their faith, community and death, represented today through the organization of their burial landscapes and burial practices. By studying the relationship between burial grounds and their associated settlements, we gain a more holistic understanding of how settlers related to, interpreted, and ultimately handled the reality of human mortality.  
This book examines the organization of 40 burial grounds founded by British settlers on the northeast coast of North America in the 17th century, with the intention of identifying trends in burial ground organization during this period of early colonization. The results can be applied to archaeological or historical research on colonial settlements that have not yet located their earliest burial ground. The book expands the current knowledge base of settler relationships with mortality through the physical placement of burials and interaction with burial landscapes within their new settlements.

166 pages, Paperback

Published September 9, 2020

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This text does a wonderful job of exploring early settler interment practices in North America in an attempt to discover where the early burials might be in Ferryland. In order to explain to readers why Lacy searched in certain areas around the Colony of Avalon to try to find the early burials, the author discusses early settlement and internment not just in Ferryland but also in other first British settlements, such as Jamestown and Maryland, and other settlements around the island of Newfoundland, such as Cupids and Trinity. Added to this is the discussion of religion around these early settlers and what religious beliefs might inform how settlers would have been buried. Lacy does a statistical analysis of a number of early cemeteries and graveyards to try to see if there is a means to predict where the early burial ground might be in Ferryland. 

While Lacy did not find the location of the earliest burials at the Colony of Avalon over two field seasons, there were other discoveries of note due to her predictive modeling, including locating an area of occupation outside of what was generally considered to be the boundaries of the occupation. The literature review and discussion of the impact of religion on colonial practices was really interesting, and offered a lot of information that I did not know, such as Puritan versus Anglican and Catholic views of burial practices. Overall, this is a very interesting work not just from the perspective of Newfoundland and Labrador colonial history, but also through the broader lens of early British settlement in North America and the religious changes that were happening in the British Isles and how that impacted early settlers, and the comparisons between fortified and unfortified early settlement.

I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Newfoundland and Labrador European history as well is early colonialism in North America. It is interestingly written, and I appreciate how the text is sometimes broken up by Lacy's small asides and comments on the research. A great text.