ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the cultural context for the diverse groups that could have been buried in the Alameda-Stone cemetery. Hispanic Catholics, Euro-American Protestants, Jewish Euro-Americans, Apache, O'odham, Yaqui, and the US Military each had distinctive ways of approaching death and burial, but not all people who were buried in the Alameda-Stone cemetery would have been buried by people of their same backgrounds and affinities. Archaeological evidence from a variety of excavated sites in the American Southwest, including Tucson, demonstrates a tendency to move previously deposited remains aside in order to place new burials and to return disturbed remains to the grave in a disarticulated, bundled pile or a variety of other non-anatomical arrangements. Military burials, which would likely have occurred mostly in the military section, would have involved the burial of individuals in uniform and military-issued clothing, the deposition of spent cartridges in grave fill and on the cemetery surface, and possibly the inclusion of flags in the grave.
