Book
Cemeteries and the Life of a Smoky Mountain Community: Cades Cove Under Foot.
(2019)
Abstract
In one of the few studies to draw upon cemetery data to reconstruct the social organization, social change, and community composition of a specific area, this volume contributes to the growing body of sociohistorical examinations of Appalachia. The authors herein reconstruct the Cades Cove community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, a mountain community from circa 1818 to 1939, whose demise can be traced to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By supplementing a statistical analysis of Cades Cove’s twenty-seven cemeteries, completed as a National Park Study (#GRSM-01120), with ethnographic examination, the authors reconstruct the community in detail to reveal previously overlooked social patterns and interactions, including insight into the death culture and death-lore of the Upland South. This work establishes cemeteries as window into (proxies of) communities, demonstrating the relevance of socio-demographic data presented by statistical and other analyses of gravestones for Appalachian Studies, Regional Studies, Cemetery Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.
Keywords
- cemetery,
- national park,
- cades cove,
- smoky mountains,
- sociology
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
Publisher
Palgrave Pivot
ISBN
978-3-030-23294-8
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-23295-5
Citation Information
Gary S. Foster and William E Lovekamp. Cemeteries and the Life of a Smoky Mountain Community: Cades Cove Under Foot.. Mattoon(2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/william_lovekamp/6/