Hand in Hand Til Death Doth Part: A Historical Assessment of the Clasped-Hands Motif in Rural Illinois1

Methods Cemetery records (gravestones and burial records) are a priori data from which all research questions and answers follow. [...]disadvantages are that a priori data both prompt and limit questions, with no opportunity to revise and refine questions outside the parameters of the data, and quan...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998) 2007-07, Vol.100 (2), p.128
Main Authors: Foster, Gary S, Lisa New Freeland
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Aging
Cemeteries
Culture
Death & dying
Demography
Ethnicity
Hands
Social classes
Social structure
Sociodemographics
Sociology
Values
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Methods Cemetery records (gravestones and burial records) are a priori data from which all research questions and answers follow. [...]disadvantages are that a priori data both prompt and limit questions, with no opportunity to revise and refine questions outside the parameters of the data, and quantitative analysis is typically univariate. [...]if the gravestone identified no familial relationship and no familial relationship was indicated on surrounding stones, the marital status of the deceased was coded as unknown, unless the deceased was less than fifteen years of age, and then the individual was coded as not married (the youngest subject [in the comparison population] identified as married was fifteen years of age). [...]matrimony constituted a substantial constraint on the selection of the clasped-hands motif in the time-space structuration of the mid-nineteenth century, at least in eastern Coles County, Illinois. The extended index finger could represent an intermediate variation between holding to, and releasing the deceased, though sequence indicates its increase in popularity as the other variations decreased. [...]was it merely a marketing variation to extend the popularity of the motif or did it have some more specific symbolic meaning for agents of that particular time-space structuration?
ISSN:1522-1067
2328-3335