Recycle Me

Everybody dies.  Yes, I said it.  So, if everybody dies, that means there are going to be a whole lot of bodies that need to be dealt with.  The usual modes of disposal are cremation and inhumation, with cremation becoming more and more popular.  But what effect does this method have on the environment?

Cremation gives the superficial impression that it is better for the environment.  However, the space-saving abilitiy of cremations doesn’t balance out the air polluting consequences.  Cremation uses fossil fuels to attain a heat intense enough to reduce a body to dust, and during the burning, mercury, dioxins, and dibenzofurans, among other organic pollutants, are released (Mari, 2010).  Being turned into air pollution would not be my ideal after death experience.

A trend that is just starting to emerge in Canada is green burials.  This is a method to reduce impact on the environment and consume fewer resources while still giving the dead a proper sending off.  Biodegradable shrouds or coffins are used and placed directly in the soil as to allow microbes to start breaking down the body immediately.  Native plants and flowers are planted over the grave plot, returning the body to nature entirely.  No embalming fluids, no toxins released - nice and simple.  Currently, there are two cemeteries is B.C. that are approved for green burial, one of which is in Victoria.  You can read more about green burials at Royal Oak Burial Park here.

Section of Royal Oak Burial Park reserved for green burials

I can see this being a good option for many as environmentalism a popular issue right now. However, what put me off about this method of burial was the depersonalization of the deceased, at least at the Royal Oak Burial Park.  Only communal monuments are used for those buried in the vicinity, and they encourage you not to go to the site of the grave for remembering the deceased, but rather to use designated memorial areas as to not disturb the ecosystem.  I think it would be nice to be able to leave a plaque dedicated to a loved one on a bench or near a tree, or have some other method of personalization.  After the trend of extravagant funerals and very personalized grave sites, we need to be eased into change.  Baby steps.  

Works cited:

          Mari, M. 2010. Toxic emissions from crematories: A review. Environment International, 36(1), 131-137.  

A Trip to St. Luke's

The other day I went to do a monument analysis with my group for my archaeology of death class.  We decided to go off the beaten track a little bit to a small cemetery at St. Luke’s Anglican Church.  The cemetery contained many graves, dating back to the late 1800’s to the present, and had a lot of interesting monuments.  You can read more about St. Luke’s cemetery here. 

There were a couple striking things about this cemetery that I think are worth mentioning.  The cemetery itself needed to be expanded twice since its creation in 1892.  Visually, this made it easier to distinguish between the older burial sites and the newer.  In the older areas of the cemetery most of the burials had a generally eastward orientation.  At first, I thought this may just be to create organization and maximize space, but luckily the explanation came up briefly in class.  For those who need enlightening, like I did, there are different explanations for this according to religious belief.  St. Luke’s was consecrated as a Christian graveyard so the orientation of the graves ties in with the Bible.  Graves were faced eastward so that when judgement day came, those in the grave would view the coming of Christ (Pearson, 1991).  There are also Bible verses that liken the rising of the sun to the rising of the Son.  (You see what they did there?)  

Aerial view of the cemetery

Another interesting thing I noticed at St. Luke’s was that there were many graves with multiple internments.  The monuments had the names of married couples, married couples and their children, and so on.  One in particular looked like the entire extended family was buried at one grave site.  It seemed that being buried with a loved one or two was important to many people in the area.  I understand the appeal to this idea – keeping the family together, having some company – sounds like a good idea. 

However, there were also a couple of monuments that took this idea to the extreme.  A couple of monuments had a blank spot just waiting for that second person to dieso they could be included in the burial.  A couple monuments went as far as to have the name of the deceased with their dates of birth and death on the monument, aw well as the name of the person to be joining them and their birth date and a blank for the looming date of death.  Personally, I would not want my name on a funerary monument in the cemetery until I was cold and dead.  I think this would be disturbing and slightly depressing.  The buried individual probably has an intimate connection with you if you are planning to be buried together, so every time you would visit them, you would encounter your name as well.  I feel like this would remind you of the inevitability of joining that person, which can be a little depressing.  But I guess some people like to be prepared? 

Works Cited

         Pearson, P. (1999). The Archaeology of Death and Burial. United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing Ltd.