The Sea Their Graves: An Archaeology of Death and Remembrance in Mari- time Culture

摘要

The fundamental question behind this book has to do not with the act of sailing ships in the Age of Sail, nor with shipwrecks, but instead with that which came next. After the ships had broken up or sunk and lives had been lost, how were British and American sailors memorialized and remembered? The author's fieldwork for this study took him to the burial grounds of the best-known maritime communities of the United Kingdom and New England, to search for gravestones, spires, stained-glass windows and plaques-anything that might yield clues into the thoughts behind memorialization of mariners who died at sea. He asks and answers the question of who created the memorials (the state? family? shipmates?) and delves into the symbolism of both imagery and the words chosen to remember the dead.