The Historic Graves Project
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A talk prepared for the #VHNIreland 2016 conference
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The Historic Graves Project
- 1. The Historic Graves Project Community-led archaeological graveyard surveys John Tierney Eachtra Archaeological Projects Ltd. December 2016 john@eachtra.ie t : 087 231 2107 Explore, Protect, Promote
- 2. 2 WHO ?
- 10. The RAMS in Action 2 years - 11 graveyards 1200 headstones
- 16. 16 HOW ?
- 17. Audio recorder Zoom H2 GPS Camera Sony HX20 Lenser P7
- 20. Historic Graveyards tend to have a common geography 1.Church buildings usually have an east-west orientation 2.Headstones usually face east (representing Jerusalem) 3.Reuse of grave plots results in burial rows. 4.In many graveyards the densest concentration of headstones is south of the church. The northern part of the graveyard is usually sparsely occupied. The Geography of an Historic Graveyard south north west east
- 23. Every Historic Graveyard Survey builds a Graveyard Folder which contains 1.Grave Memorial Register 2.Sketch Plan 3.Thumbnail Contact Sheets (colour) 4.Numerically filed record sheets The Graveyard Folder Register Sketch Plan Contact Sheets Record Sheets
- 24. 2424
- 25. 2525 Reading 1 March the 25th 1826 Reading 2 March the 2nd 1825 Reading 3 Octobr the 5th 1825 First Cutting Octobr the 5th 1825 Final Cutting March the 2nd 1826
- 28. 28 WHAT?
- 32. Count(y) Cork 131 Limerick 105 Tipperary 48 Waterford 32 Laois 208 Offaly 7 Galway 12 Westmeath 4 Dublin 20 Kildare 6 Kilkenny 57
- 36. 3636
- 39. 39 Summary 1. Community-led 2. 1 geotagged photograph per headstone 3. Simple sketch plans 4. Paper archive 5. Publish Immediately – fix as you go
Notas do Editor
- We are a small archaeological consultancy based in West Waterford and with a suboffice in London. We are 20 years old and do a mix of community and development-based archaeology.
- I am the director of the HGs project and also secretary of our local heritage group in Ardmore. For three years I was secretary of our local GAA club and that was a formative phase in the HGs project as it showed us how rural communities work in Ireland. Since 2010 we have averaged one historic graveyard per week and have almost 800 graveyards in the system, approx 30% of which are complete. All save a handful are the products of community-led surveys. Eachtra are essentially the junior partners in all of the surveys. The community-led ethos was learned from our main funders – the Leader Rural Development Funds but it also macthed our personal philosophies. We provide the system, the training and the digital infrastructure but the communities take responsibility for quality and completion. Every project needs a driver such as Sheila in the purple jacket – she works in a very busy local business and knows everybody in her locality and coordinates multiple parishes.
- This is my colleague Maurizio Toscano who is the king of digital execution -I give him a few crumpled index cards with designs drawn on and he makes it all work – I first asked Maurizio to make us a website to record historc graveyards in West Waterford and he built one which worked for the whole of Ireland and within a few months he had expanded it to work globally.
- A former colleague Finn Delaney was instrumental in advancing the multimedia elements of the field surveys. As field archaeologists more experienced with a shovel and wheelbarrow myself and Finn developed our approach to multimedia in field archaeology based on the writings of Bernie Goldbach. Bernie’s granny was a Maher from Co. Clare and as a Senior Multimedia Lecturer in LIT his ideas have been formativethroughout the project. He started us on audio and video and now has us working in 360 imagery.
- Using 360 degree imagery (video and equirectangular images) for conservation purposes.
- Robin Turk Paddy Twomey and Pat Scully are shown here and Robin’s design sense and photography have been very important over the last number of years. The lamp he holds is one we use for reading headstones – it cost 300e but is not more cost effective than the 70e lensers I will show later as the fuse keeps blowing in it.
- Besides showing the typical environment in which we work this photo shows Jacinta Kiely in action. If I am the driver of the project Jacinta is the finisher. Every company and every project needs a finisher – without one you’re finished, and not in a good way.
- In the last 6 years we have worked with over 500 community groups stretching from North Cork to Notrhumberland. We average one graveyard survey per week and we run funded training programmes approximately 20 weeks of the year.. The average project takes approx 18 months of development time to setup and I’d say we spend about 25% of our time in this project development work. Training takes two days and we generally get an average graveyard done in that time. Coomuntieis are then encouraged to continue to do new surveys. Many are happy to do one graveyard while others get the bug and do multiples. From my work with the GAA we have learned that the most productive communities take ownership of the surveys from the beginning.
- The RAMS are retired gents based in Newcastle, Rathcoole, Saggart and for 2.5 years they have been surveying in their home area.
- Our background as field archaeologists is keyto the whole project. Both Jacinta andI learned our trade as diggers under the wings of Mick & Judith Monk (RIP). Their iteration of the Single Context Recording system broke archaeological evidence down into individual events in time which were recorded into a detailed system of record sheets, scaled drawings and Harris matrices. It intrigued me watching their system in action as the first thing you had to buy was a lever arch folder and a hole punch for filing the record sheets. While the HGs project is highly digital it does also produce a paper archive of the surveys – as we currently discuss what constitutes Community Archaeology I revert back to Mick Monk mode and believe if a project does not produce data then it is not archaeology.
- Eachtra are highly digital in our excavation & post-excavation methodologies which has developed a strong skillset in managing geolocated digital datasets and the lessons we have learned on large excavation projects have been applied to community heritage & digital publication. Our colleague Maurizio built an internal GIS for us which we have been using since 2006.
- All site registers on an excavation are linked to the consultation map. All site data is digitised during the excavation. – postex starts during the ex. We geolocate objects with cm’s accuracy – we use this same approach to map headstones in a graveyard or homesteads in a street or townland.
- Behind it all are simple spreadsheets – if you can fill out a spreadsheet you can make a geodatabase. Simple spreadsheets are at the centre of all of our projects. Besides training communities to record headstones I the field we also teach them simple systems for data input and publication.
- There is a phrase used in West Cork. Black cat, black kitten. The strong methodological training we received here in UCC has been the foundations for all of our work since the late 80s.
- how to survey a graveyard
- Simply put, we number each grave memorial with masking tape and a marker. We then take one geotagged photo of each memorial in numbered sequence and upload this to the website. Instant publication is highly engaging for our volunteer groups – theys ee immediate results for their work. The geotagged grave memorial photo is then a hook that we can hang other media (audio and video stories) onto. We have become geolocated heritage media content publishers. Local people do the surveys, tell their stories and publish them to the web. As well as hi-tech tools like GPS cameras and audio recorders we depend on simple rolls of masking tape and markers. The tape is used to put a number on the back of each grave memorial. This usually stays on for a week or two and is removed by the community when they are done. If the labels are washed off they are simple to replace. An average graveyard of 89headstones can be renumbered in less than an hour.
- The whole enterprise relies on a simple role of masking tape which we use to number each grave memorial (average Irish rural graveyard has 89 headstones)
- Our system is designed to survey a graveyard completely - the average rural graveyard has 100-200 headstones. Each headstone is equally important and all are treated the same. These are the three simple steps
- Before surveying the graveyard we must first understand the geography of the place. N-S, E-S and the 3ft pace.
- Common elements of an historic graveyard Ballinacurra, Midleton, Cork
- Since the project started we have been set other puzzles -in many irish graveyards there are uninscribed grave markers - plain field stones singly set or in pairs/groups. A lady named Betty White taught us to look for the deliberate variation in morphology in these stones - they were selected for shape to distinguish them from their neighbours - sometimes called Famine grave markers they are mostly markers for farming families/cottiers? These three headstones are side by side in a graveyard in Kinsale and undeniably chosen for their shape.
- All of the records are compiled into The Graveyard Folder which is kept locally.
- I am showing it this time to demonstrate our key technique for reading headstones -we use a single led Lenser P7 torch - aim for 200 lumens or greater than 3 million candle power. Anything less powerful will be a disappointment - so our advice for all graveyard researchers is get the lenser P7.
- When we read this Cloncrew headstone first we saw... then we realised there was an nd with a th - how could that be? Then we noted the 1826 had been initially 1825. An when we finally got our eyes in we say the M in March overlay an O, the a had been a c, the r a t, the c an o and the H a b. In the end we settled on a clerical error and a shallow sanding allowed a recut to work also probably a refill took place.
- And light, sunlight in particular, is our main tool of discovery
- Drape a blanket over the top of a headstone and in the resulting shade a flashlamp can be used to decipher even the most difficult epitaphs.
- What does the HGs project look like?
- Our own resource at www.historcgraves.ie. Drupal based CMS.
- Distribution map of the community surveyed graveyards - there are over 700 graveyards online in the system, surveyd and published by over 500 community groups in 5 years.
- Limerick
- The oldest ‘modern’ headstone in the system.
- Current upload this week. St. Mary;s, Knockainey, Co. Limerick.
- Relative location sketch plan.
- Each community editor can download their own dataset. I show this slide because to me it represents a key part of the projects. We are building community datasets - not opinions - but data. That is what brings most visitors to our site. So communities must build datasets and stories and they must then share it - preferably in some kind of opensource manner - again part of the digital revolution in history.
- In the early 19th century the British government came up with a plan to fund assisted emigration programs for Irish people who were desperate. Peter Robinson was selected to lead one of the earliest expeditions. The advertisement which proclaimed the emigration scheme stated categorically that only a limited number of Settlers would be chosen to emigrate to Upper Canada. Most of the emigrants were chosen from the area north of the Blackwater River in Cork from the estates of 3 key landlords though a number of Kinsellas, from the southeast of Ireland, also went. Eight land owners chose 239 families with 37 other landowners picking the remaining 68 families. Emigrants were required to be peasants, and Roman Catholic although several Protestant families were chosen. No person over the age of 45 would be accepted. Each emigrant was to be given 70 acres which would be subject to a payment of an annual quit rent to the Crown, to be paid every six months at 2 pence per acre. In “The Peter Robinson Settlement of 1825″, author Bill LaBranche says, “In the year 1823 Robinson was to lead an emigration from poverty stricken Ireland to Canada bringing over 182 families in that same year, Robinson opened and settled much of the Ottawa Valley. By May, 1825, the problem had not resolved itself and once again, Robinson, as Superintendent, hustled his Settlers onto the nine ships that awaited them. A total of 2,024 people were crowded onto those nine ships causing ships fever which resulted in several deaths during the voyage.” The families, over two thousand in total settled in 6 townships throughout the Ottawa Valley and the Peterborough area of Ontario. These townships include Emily, Otonabee, Ennismore, Douro (Dummer), Ottawa, Marmora and Asphodel.
- The graveyards currently gathered in the Peter Robinson group are found here; http://historicgraves.com/project/graveyards-ballyhoura-peter-robinson-assisted-emigration-project
- Ballinaboy
- Killingley – healing stone
- Deliberately chosen for the quartz seams.
- Killeagh 014
- Caherlag 069
- Killingley 92
- Jim and Waltie Murphy with the raretimber grave memorials they discoveredin Ardmore graveyard, near Passage West, Cork. The shipwrights carpentry skills extended into the graveyard.
- The project started with the intention of recording historic gravestone assemblages. It quickly developed into a broader project than that. From the first time I recorded my grandparents headstone I had a completely different experience that your usual dispassionate, scientific recording process we were trained into. Community groups engage with the surveys because it is their own people who are buried in the graveyards. We are accumulating a digital dataset which represents deep continuities of practice and belief. This photo is of healing skill in a niche in Kilbarry, Roscommon. Touch the skull to cure headaches but also spend the night in the ruined church to cure nervous afflictions –still happening today. More itneretsing than that though is the fatc that the family who cut the grass here are the Cox’s and they have been Stewards of Kilbarry for 1000 years.