Continuing Research

As I stated in my last blog I have been finishing up on the readings I had from last week where I got a whole new list of papers and journals. I have finished all but one of them so far, since it is a long paper. Each of the papers and journals are informative and give me an incite into the type of research I will be doing when I get to the field work portion of my internship. These works are mainly about how to gather and understand the iconography, with maps of their location and any changes that were going on at the time. They also talked extensively on the important of preservation of cemeteries because of how much history can be found in them. This week was especially important, for it was the week of my long awaited midterm evaluation. During the meeting I was told the things I need to work on and what I have been doing relativity well so far. The main thing I need to work on is communication, as a student and history major I am given an assignment and I work on it on my own and turn it in. I learned that this does not work in the working world, what I learned in the meeting was that I need to communicate things better, such as things I feel do not need to be mentions, need to be mentioned such as the books I am finding or catalogs, etc. This is something that I never thought to do because I am so used to producing works on my own and turning it in and that is the end of it. It is a process, the best example he gave me was that if two people are doing the same amount of work, but one is more vocal about it and informs the boos of what they are working on, who is the boss going to think is up for a promotion? The answer is the one that is vocal about their work. So it was important to learn, because that is the point of an internship to get experience and learn how things are in the field. Along with what is expected from me in the time to come. We also spoke more in depth about what I will be doing for my deliverable, which is create a conference level poster. Which will need to be filled with information and pictures of my findings as well as a main research question I had, and how I solved that question. My internship supervisor during the meeting also gave me an assignment to work on this coming week. What I will be working on is using Microsoft Excel to create a spread sheet of how I will be recording my data when I start my field work. In the spread sheet I will have different sections for name, dates, iconography (what symbolism is on the marker), marker types (cement, granite, etc.), whether they are male or female etc. I am currently waiting on the book of Florida History that was recommended to me by a University of Central Florida professor, I hope that when I get it I can find some good information which I am certain I will. When I get the book what I will be looking at will be population, Indian removal act, seminal wars and the relocation of settlers, urbanization, etc. All of these changes in what is going on in Florida at the time can affect a cemetery especially its iconography. These are all things that I will have to read about and put it into my finding when I get to the field work portion of my internship. Over all this has been a productive week filled with a list of things that need to be done in the next coming week.

Sources I am using for as of late:

- A Study of Duval County Grave Markers
by Lucy Ames Edwards

- Gone but not Forgotten: Wakulla County's Folk Graveyards

by Sherrie Stokes

- Graveyards and Social Structures

- Map and Database Construction for an Historic Cemetery: Methods and Applications

by: Johan Liebens

- Necrogeography in the United States

Published by: American Geographical Society 

- Cemetery symbolism of prairie pioneers- gravestone art and social change in Story County

by: Coleen Lou Nutty

- Under Grave Conditions; African American Signs of Life and Death in North Florida

by: Robin Franklin Nigh

- Using Cemetery Data to Reconstruct Immigration and Migration Patterns: St. Michael's Cemetery, Pensacola, Florida

by: Sarah Elizabeth Patterson
- Gravestone Iconography and Mortuary Ideology
by: Frederick J.E. Gorman and Michael DiBlasi
- The Historical Archaeology of Mortuary Behavior: Coffin Hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts
by: Edward L. Bell


Books:
- In Small Things Forgotten
by: James Deetz

Sears Catalog: 

-Special catalogue of tombstones, monuments, tablets and markers. (1902) Sears Roebuck & Co. Chicago, Ill.