Cemeteries And The Life Of A Smoky Mountain Community: Cades Cove Under Foot

In one of the few studies to draw upon cemetery data to reconstruct the social organization, social change, and community composition of a specific area, this volume contributes to the growing body of sociohistorical examinations of Appalachia. The authors herein reconstruct the Cades Cove community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, a mountain community from circa 1818 to 1939, whose demise can be traced to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By supplementing a statistical analysis of Cades Cove’s twenty-seven cemeteries, completed as a National Park Study (#GRSM-01120), with ethnographic examination, the authors reconstruct the community in detail to reveal previously overlooked social patterns and interactions, including insight into the death culture and death-lore of the Upland South. This work establishes cemeteries as window into (proxies of) communities, demonstrating the relevance of socio-demographic data presented by statistical and other analyses of gravestones for Appalachian Studies, Regional Studies, Cemetery Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.

• | Author: Gary S. Foster, William E. Lovekamp
• | Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• | Publication Date: Jul 16, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 192 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 3030232948
• | ISBN-13: 9783030232948