The Secret Cemetery

Burial sites have long been recognized as a way to understand past civilizations. Yet, the meanings of our present day cemeteries have been virtually ignored, even though they reveal much about our cultures. Exploring an extraordinarily diverse range of memorial practice - Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican, as well as the unchurched - The Secret Cemetery is an intriguing study of what these places of death mean to the living. Most of us experience cemeteries at a ritualized moment of loss. What we forget is that these are often places to which we return either as a general space in which to contemplate or as a specific site to be tended. These are also places where different communities can reinforce boundaries and even recreate a sense of homeland. Over time, ritual, artefact and place shape an intensely personal landscape of memory and mourning, a landscape more alive, more actively engaged with than many of the other places we inhabit.

Doris Francis is Research Associate, Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Leonie Kellaher is Principal Research Officer and Director of the Centre for Environmental and Social Studies in Ageing, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of North London and Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of North London. Georgina Neophytou is Research Assistant, University of North London and Consultant, Open University.