When Absence is the Artifact: Unmarked Graves in the Jewish Section, Melbourne General Cemetery
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When Absence is the Artifact: Unmarked Graves in the Jewish Section, Melbourne General Cemetery Michael Lever
Published online: 19 August 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract A study of unmarked nineteenth-century Jewish graves in the Melbourne General Cemetery strongly counters traditional histories of local communal practice and identity. An expanded synthesis of sources allows for an understanding of the site in international and local contexts, both historical and current. Previous aboveground archaeological cemetery studies have been limited to analysis of funerary monumentation. This article finds meaning in the archaeological record formed by the absence of burial markers altogether. Keywords Cemetery . Archaeology and history . Ethnicity . Colonial Australia Australian historical archaeology has recently seen an increased emphasis on multiplesource synthesis in enriched description, analysis and explanation of the past (Mackay et al. 2006; Mayne 2006; Murray 2006a, b; Murray and Cook 2005). This research goes beyond the parameters of the largely North American precedents of historically and ethnographically informed archaeological case studies (e.g., Praetzellis 2004; Yamin 2000). The Australian call for intra and inter-city, and international comparison of sites, findings, and practices (Murray 2006a) appears novel in historical archaeology. This article, too, studies local practice against an international background. I examined a nineteenth-century site identified with an ethnic community: the Jewish section in the Melbourne General Cemetery (Lever 2006). My findings do not sit well with existing communal histories or memory, nor would they support notions of ethnicity, identity, and their material practices as directly legible from the material record. Indeed, material evidence which appears normative for contemporaneous Melbournian society is shown here as a startling divergence from traditional norms of an ethnic minority. The anomaly of such practice and its material remains, only become evident through a detailed examination of the past and present mortuary practices of this ethnic group. This requires historical study of their international background, and their M. Lever (*) Archaeology Program, La Trobe University, Melbourne 3086, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Int J Histor Archaeol (2009) 13:464–487
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subsequent identity formation, compared with historical accounts of practices common in wider society of their new homeland. The archaeological record differs markedly from their story as told through history. The middle ground, where are discussed the ambiguities and disparities between archaeology and history, provides a focus of dynamic and fruitful creative tension. Above-ground archaeological cemetery studies are no novelty (Cannon 1989; Clark 1987; Deetz and Dethlefsen 1966; Dethlefsen 1969; Ellison 1993; Mytum 1989, 1999; Parker-Pearson 1982; Rahtz and Watts 1983; Tarlow 1999). Extraction of historical information from the material markers of burial i
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