ABSTRACT
Inscriptions and images on gravestones are often seen as valuable sources by historians forming an archive on a flat surface. While a lot can be learned about past sentiments and relations between the living and the dead from reading gravestones in this way, the materiality of the gravestones might be even more important in the process of mourning. On the basis of two extended case studies from Denmark I show how for the bereaved gravestones become closely associated and identical with the dead to the extent that they are experienced as somehow alive. The stones are often talked to, given gifts, touched, kissed, fed, bathed and photographed. Through these practices the gravestones, I argue, are animated with life and become substitutes for the body of the dead. I further demonstrate how this is also visible at the end of the life cycle of the gravestones when they are ritually treated as, and emotionally reacted to, in some of the same ways as corpses are. Coming to terms with the demise of someone close requires time. In this gradual and painful process, gravestones play an important and beneficial role. For the abrupt loss of the departed it provides a rock-solid, tangible presence that lasts and stays put. Unlike over the occurrence of death, the gravestone and related practices allow the bereaved to exert control. Yet, though the stone may substitute for the physical body, an ambiguity remains and sometimes the bereaved realise they are ‘talking with a cold grey stone’.
