Live Oak Cemetery Analysis

Anthropologists can learn about different cultures and generations by visiting cemeteries worldwide. Tombstones can be observed, compared, and analyzed so we will have an idea how different cultures buried their dead. I visited the Live Oak Cemetery and the Greenville Cemetery in Greenville, MS. The Live Oak Cemetery is a predominately black cemetery and the Greenville Cemetery is a predominately white cemetery. Both cemeteries have a lot of history behind them by containing tombstones from the 1800s, 1900s and the 2000s. The body of Holt Collier was buried in 1936 at the Live Oak Cemetery and this is made known at the entrance of the cemetery. Holt Collier is famed as a bear hunter and he was the one that guided President Theodore
This cemetery was very old and tombstones were scattered everywhere in no particular order. The Live Oak Cemetery was a wide-open field with a few trees scattered about. I was able to walk throughout the whole cemetery. Many of the tombstones were out of place and had fallen over due to time. There were tombstones in the woods beside the cemetery and some were surrounding trees in the open field. Some tombstones were even off by themselves and surrounded by gates. The tombstones from the 1800s and 1900s were either small and short or tall and skinny. Overall, there wasn’t much variety in the style of the tombstones. Mostly all of the tombstones had not been replaced over time, so they were very worn down from the environment. The second cemetery I visited was the Greenville Cemetery. The Greenville Cemetery was huge and it stretched across many acres with roads all about. The tombstones in this cemetery were organized in straight rows. The majority of the tombstones from the 1800s and 1900s had been replaced with newer tombstones. There were a huge variety of tombstones from small and simple to tall and detailed
The white cemetery was more private than the black cemetery. The black cemetery was in the middle of town and it was not gated. One family had surrounded their plots with a fence in order to ensure privacy. Organization was a key priority in the white cemetery but not in the black cemetery. Tombstones were aligned in perfect rows with ample space between each tombstone in the white cemetery. In the black cemetery, tombstones were scattered all over and some were on top of others. I accidentally stepped on tombstones that were buried in the grass in the black cemetery. In the white cemetery, there were younger generations that replaced the tombstones of the older generations. It was apparent that this was not the case in the black cemetery. It looked as if the tombstones from the 1800s had not been touched or moved since they were first placed. Whites are also more likely to not put a price tag on a tombstone for their loved one. The tombstones in the white cemetery were much more elegant and detailed compared to those in the black