Scottish Archaeological Research Framework: Future Thinking on Carved Stones

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Beautiful dirt : exploring the American taboo of death through the things we leave behind

‘Beautiful Dirt’ is a project meant to help people think about death as a way to learn and grow, rather than a ‘never happening’ taboo. Contemporary research into western dialogues around death show a consistent anxiety towards being forgotten, as well as a fear of being a burden when passing away. The abject nature of the topic leaves people diminishing the weight of the things they leave behind, and the things they forget to. This perpetuates a cycle of denial in order to avoid stress, emburdening loved ones with an unplanned mass of personal items and piecemeal stories to assemble, culminating in an anxious end-of-life care experience, all due to the lack of any platform to process these inaccessible emotions. In order to help break down the fears around death planning in aging populations, this project proposes the introduction of a new ‘tombstone’ archetype, alongside a prompted ‘on-boarding’ journaling method meant to be filled with life stories. The tombstone functions as a family memorial archive which houses all of a deceased person’s journal stories, alongside any physical mementos people choose to place when visiting. The purpose of creating these two active objects is to: a) Help localize a person’s stories in a ritualized space, so they maintain meaning and allow family / close peoples to access intimate moments that would otherwise be lost. b) Facilitate intergenerational understanding through publicly accessible personal histories. c) Familiarize western people to a communal and reciprocal death dialogue, relieving stress in the death-planning process through habit-formed self-reflection.. d) Mitigate the common sense of purposelessness and anxiety found in elderly retirement communities. e) Break away from the classist and traditionally hierarchical tropes of ‘lot-style’ cemeteries, shifting to a more space conscious and ecologically circular alternative

Shot at Dawn: Late Photography and the Anti-War Memorial

The military executions of World War One are the subject of Chloe Dewe Mathews’s 2014 photographic series Shot at Dawn. These events—in which hundreds of soldiers were court-martialled and executed for cowardice and desertion—remain controversial, without consensus or established collective narrative. This article charts historic negotiations with the subject but also considers more recent efforts to integrate these proceedings within memorial practice. World War One remembrance activities, whilst diverse, have often emphasised sacrifice, heroism and community. Correspondingly, participation and engagement were core values in the major British World War One centenary arts project, titled 14-18 NOW, from which Shot at Dawn was commissioned. Chloe Dewe Mathews’s contribution to the programme, however, presents a photographic aesthetic of resistance to the principles of inclusivity and remembrance elsewhere embraced by the project. As such, the work challenges the consensual politics of commemoration and—through the practices of late photography, land art and performance pilgrimage— substitutes trauma and forgetfulness for reconciliation and memory

Commemoration, Memory and the Process of Display: Negotiating the Imperial War Museum's First World War Exhibitions, 1964 - 2014

This thesis explores the key permanent and temporary First World War exhibitions held at the Imperial War Museum in London over a fifty year period. In so doing, it examines the theoretical, political and intellectual considerations that inform exhibition-making. It thus illuminates the possibilities, challenges and difficulties, of displaying the 'War to End All Wars'. Furthermore, by situating these displays within their respective social, economic and cultural contexts, this produces a critical analysis of past and present practices of display. A study of these public presentations of the First World War enables discussion of the Museum’s primary agendas, and its role as a national public institution. In considering this with the broader effect of generational shifts and the ever-changing impact of the War’s cultural memory on this institution, the thesis investigates how the Imperial War Museum has consistently reinvented itself to produce engaging portrayals of the conflict for changing audiences.Arts and Humanities Research Council. Collaborative Doctoral Award in partnership with Imperial War Museums

COVID-19 Remembrance and Reflection: Lessons from the Past and Attitudes in the Present

This is the final versionArts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC

Inscribing Memory: Art and the Place of Personal Expressions of Grief in Memorial Culture

Expressing grief and engaging in mourning are vital healing processes for those who have experienced loss, trauma or violence. Regardless of whether in the distant past or as an ongoing condition, evidence suggests that the mourning process and the partaking of commemorative rituals are essential to the psychological and emotional wellbeing of the individual. This thesis considers artistic alternatives to the role that monuments and memorials have traditionally played in assisting this process. A range of theorists and philosophers including those in the fields of art criticism, history, and trauma studies are referred to in ascertaining not only how monuments and memorials work, but the role that contemporary art can play in imparting meaningful remembrance and solace. This project tests the proposition that contemporary art, through both public and personal expression, can offer an open- ended re-evaluation of the past, instead of the static nature of traditional commemoration. I contend that this can be realised in the form of actions and ephemeral, temporary and materially challenging artistic means in engaging the viewer empathically. I will advance arguments to challenge fixing memory in place and time while also arguing for the place of smaller, more personal expressions of remembrance. My studio practice incorporates pertinent psychological aspects such as postmemory and trauma-induced forgetting in the form of absence, and considers the work of key artists. This studio work investigates materiality – as both traditionally employed in memorial culture, such as metal and stone - and other forms including textiles and more fugitive examples such as hair and the use of fire. The relevance of time, memory and ritual are also evident in this work as well as in the thesis. Although informed by personal, familial experience – often conveyed through my use of family possessions - my works appeal to broader aspects of memorial culture, engaging in customs and rituals and universal themes of loss and grief

ROMANTICISM AND REMEMBERING

This article looks at the celebrated poem Elegy in a CountryChurchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray, and links it to the place of itsinspiration, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The development ofEnglish churchyard memorials is considered, followed by a briefdiscussion of the Graveyard School of poetry, which consideredthemes of mortality and melancholy set in the context of burialgrounds. This formed a strand of proto-romanticism and wasinfluential across Europe. The poem is then analysed in terms of itsdiscussion of rural approaches to death and remembrance. A surveyof mid-18th century churchyard memorials at Stoke Poges is thenprovided, and their imagery discussed: most of these post-date thepublication of the poem. Thomas Gray died in 1771 and was buriedin the tomb of his mother and aunt. He subsequently received amemorial in Westminster Abbey. A later owner of Stoke Park, themanor house of the estate, John Penn, was eager to commemoratethe poet. He commissioned the celebrated architect James Wyatt todesign a memorial which would be visible from the main house.This was erected in 1799, and consisted of a sarcophagus raised on a tall base, the sides of which were inscribed with extracts fromthe Elegy. This was a highly unusual form of parkland memorialcelebrating a poet and his best-known work, which has subsequentlybecome one of the best-known verses in the English language.There is irony in that the poem is a discussion of rural humilityand yet was celebrated through an imposing monument, raisedby an extremely wealthy owner as a feature in his private park