A n c i e n t P l a n e t
Symbols of Mortality at a
O n l i n e
Scottish Graveyard
j o u r n a l
By Lorrain e Evans M.A.
B
urial grounds have been fashioned as much by the people who founded and used them, as by the buildings, gravestones and other features which they contain. Graveyards can also be
used as records of social change, the symbols engraved upon individual memorials convey a sense of peoples inherent belief systems, as they were constructed, adapted or abandoned depending on people’s needs. Their stones tell of the extraordinary events that once shaped the community as a whole and provide a rare insight into the small details of daily life long since gone.
For my first foray as a contributor to this journal I have chosen to take the reader on a rather personal journey and petition your indulgence for but a moment. For some years, due to a serious health issue, I found myself unable to travel to Egypt, in order to pursue my PhD research, and subsequently chose to locate to the wilds of Scotland to recuperate. I was well aware of the vast richness of Scottish archaeology yet, with a heavy heart, I felt these intervening years would be both a professional and personal
low-point for me. Oh how wrong could I be! For it soon became apparent that my new world was full of archaeological wonderment in the guise of local burial grounds and graveyards. I shall kerb my zeal somewhat but suffice to say I became enchanted, some may argue a little obsessed, with graveyards and their inherent symbolism and I soon found my days consumed by a wide variety of death-skulls, memento mori imagery, totemic emblems and the ambiguously entitled ‘pirates graveyard’! But prior to 121