Gone to the Grave: Burial Customs of the Arkansas Ozarks, 1850-1950, by former free-lance newspaper reporter Abby Burnett, is both intriguing and confounding. Based on historical collections and recent fieldwork, Burnett’s survey of various customs is lacking in contextual information and analysis. In the first few pages, the author is careful to delimit the bulk of the discussion to Protestant Euro-North Americans, although the text affords some insight into African-American practice in the area as well. The survey does not include Native American customs, or those of Catholics or Jews, due to “these faiths’ small numbers in the Ozarks” (xiii). Burnett also declares that “the role played by religion, faith-healing, and prayer were also outside the scope of this book” (xiii). It is difficult to reconcile such a statement with the subject matter, as religious and spiritual beliefs are the foundation of much death custom, not to mention traditional medicine. And, curiously, Alan Jabbour is identified as an historian rather than a folklorist.
While the title indicates a focus on burial customs, Gone to the Grave is actually a wide-ranging introduction to the region’s folklife as well as the commodification of certain practices. Burnett interviewed upwards of sixty individuals in addition to examining WPA Early Settlers’ Personal History Questionnaires and Historical Records Surveys, census schedules, county oral history projects, the Shiloh Oral History Collection, the Garland County Historical Society Collection, individual business records (e.g., hardware stores and funeral homes), cemetery association records, newspapers, and unpublished memoirs, among other sources. Sixty-plus images, including historic photographs from museum and archive collections and contemporary shots of material culture taken by the author, accompany the text. Well-known folklore collections such as those published by Frank C. Brown, Newbell Niles Puckett, and Vance Randolph provide both supporting and contradictory data. Burnett gains the reader’s confidence in acknowledging inconsistencies between sources (e.g., one source identifying a certain practice as lucky, while another claims it to be unlucky). Source materials are painstakingly documented with notes at the end of the text. An extensive bibliography follows the notes and includes unpublished material held in public and private collections. Burnett also provides an alphabetical listing of oral histories she elicited or consulted, as well as an index.
Following the preface and acknowledgments, the text is divided into twelve chapters, each with a focus on some aspect of death custom, including the avoidance of death via traditional health practices. The first chapter, “Keeping Death at Bay,” is followed by “Sitting up with the Sick and Dying,” which precedes “Laying Out the Body,” and so on. The discussion of traditional health practices continues throughout the text, as does that of popular culture. A significant strength of the book is Burnett’s documentation of patent medicines and the gradual rise of what is now called the death-care industry, particularly as it developed in the Ozarks, with the penultimate chapter devoted to “Early Undertaking.”
Also of note, chapter 11 (“Disenfranchised Death”) explores the customs that developed to manage the demise of variously marginalized persons such as slaves, the poor, criminals, crime victims, victims of epidemics such as smallpox, and soldiers of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. One poignant section documents the negotiation involved in facilitating both the practical and emotional aspects of burying soldiers and other military personnel far away from their homes, sometimes eventuating in exhumations and reburials.
The survey nature of Gone to the Grave leaves the interpretation of the data to the reader. As such, it could be useful as a textbook in undergraduate courses in folklore and history to inspire students to their own interpretation. While noting the lack of analysis, researchers will nevertheless appreciate Burnett’s unflinching approach to the topic as well as her careful attention to documentation. Despite its weaknesses, Burnett’s broad treatment of “burial customs” renders this book a noteworthy contribution to occupational folklife studies and to our understanding of the ways in which death custom moves along the folklore-popular culture continuum; in addition it presents a wealth of traditional health and death customs.
--------
[Review length: 674 words • Review posted on May 4, 2015]