It may be that it is not feasible for you to go out into your community and visit a local graveyard for the purposes of this course. If this is you, please just send me a note saying that you’ll be doing the alternative. I don’t need a reason why; I can imagine several different scenarios where an alternative might be necessary, so we’ll roll with it.
The alternative I’ve crafted below might cause us hiccups and roadblocks or other unforseen difficulties. That’s OK. No archaeological project ever goes off perfectly without a hitch. Adapting and working through the consequences is part of the point.
For this alternative project, you’ll capture data that has already escaped online, principally into the findagrave.com website. I still want you to use the same recording framework as the main project. In subsequent weeks, you’ll read the main instructions and just adapt/adopt accordingly - you will want to consult with other students who are trying the same thing, and with me. There will be situations where this is easy; there will be situations where this is hard; there will be situations where it all breaks.
That’s OK
In essence, the only difference between the ‘main’ project and this alternative is the site of your research. Let’s call it:
The Findagrave.com Grave Project
I want you to use findagrave.com to locate historical graveyards near you. Find some, and save the photographs to your own machine (right-click on a photo, ‘save as’). I want you to work from the photographs of stones and record them in our system. In this way, we bring the site to you. (You might also want to look at billion graves.)