Body, Culture, and Place:

Towards an Anthropology of the Cemetery

Alessandro Gusman1, Cristina Vargas2

1
Ariodante Fabretti Foundation, Department SAAST, University of Turin, via Giolitti 21/E, 10123, Torino
(Italy). Tel. 011/0914828, e-mail: alegusman@inwind.it.
2
Corresponding Author, Ariodante Fabretti Foundation, Department SAAST, University of Turin, via
Giolitti 21/E, 10123, Torino (Italy). Tel. 011/0914828, e-mail: vargascri@hotmail.it

1
Abstract
This paper presents some of the main results of a two-year research project on cemeteries
entitled “Place and cult of the dead in Piedmont”; the project was developed using
multidisciplinary approach, with particular attention to an anthropological perspective
based on field research, interviews and observation.
Few studies have been conducted about Italian contemporary cemeteries, and they are
usually limited to an historical or architectural approach. The aim of the present paper is
to analyze 3 case studies from Piedmont (Parco Turin, Fossano and Torre Pellice) and to
provide some reflections on the meaning of the cemetery as a social space, focusing
particularly on the concept of “landscape” as it emerged in anthropology during the last
decades, and on the idea of cemetery as a place for constructing an individual and
collective self-representation.

Keywords: cemetery, landscape, self-representation, body

2
1. Introduction3
For a long time the study of cemeteries has been only marginal in anthropological
research, and usually limited to those places of burial the ethnographers encountered in
their fieldwork in non-Western societies; places that are, in a number of cases, far from
what is generally referred to as a “cemetery”4 in Europe. This in addition to the fact that
anthropology has become more and more comprehensive during the last decades, with an
increasing number of research carried out in Europe, with a particular focus on migration,
on the Mediterranean setting and on the enlargement of the European Union to the East of
the continent.
Research about cemeteries remained confined to other disciplines, notably to history,
art and architecture; only in recent years, with the growing awareness that this kind of
study requires an interdisciplinary approach (Rugg, 2000), a limited number of
anthropological works on cemeteries has begun to appear, especially in the United
Kingdom, the best example being probably the book The Secret Cemetery (Francis,
Kellaher & Neophytou, 2005).
Still, a long way has to be covered for the cemetery to become an established field of
study for anthropology5, even if it is a place where, to give just an example, ethnic and
identity boundaries are reaffirmed and negotiated through the recourse to specific
symbols and ritual by religious and ethnic minorities (Reimers, 1999). Whilst the study of
the cemetery from an historical perspective is well established, especially about the 19th
century transformation occurred after the introduction of the Napoleonic law that was at
the basis of the growth of the modern - bourgeois - cemetery, research projects about the
cemeterial institution in contemporary European countries are few and still lack solid
foundations.

3
This paper is the result of a common reflection of the two authors. Nevertheless, parts 1 and 4 have been
written by Alessandro Gusman, while parts 2 and 3 by Cristina Vargas. Conclusions have been written by
the two of us.
4
For Julie Rugg (2000) it’s important to distinguish among the different “places of the dead” that can be
found in contemporary society, such as churchyards, burial ground or pantheons. The word “cemetery” thus
designates a particular location for burial: mostly secular, the cemetery has a larger size compared to the
other burial places, the space is delimited by gates and boundaries with an internal demarcation and it is
sited, in most cases, outside the urban settlement. It is important to notice that in italian the word “cimitero”
is commonly used in reference to cemeteries as well as to churchyards and other burial spaces. The
differences among those different places of the dead are not stressed in everyday’s language.
5
In 1989, Didier Urbain (1989, p. 16) wrote that cemetery was still “a virgin space for ethnography”; after
more than 20 years the situation has just slightly changed.

3
 This situation reflects, at least in part, the lack of a cemeterial culture. As a number of
studies has already demonstrated, during the 20th century the cemetery became more and
more a functional space, marginal not only in a physical sense, but also in a cultural one.
With the “domestication” of death (Ariès, 1975), cemetery became a sort of “service
tool” (Redemagni, 2004, p. 99), with a mono-functional and para-residential destination.
Confined at the margins of the urban space for hygienic reasons (or, more recently, in
order to expel the presence of death from our societies), segregated from the “world of the
living” through the use of fencing, the cemetery lost the place it had in 19th century
culture. Contemporary European societies, especially after the Second World War, failed
to elaborate an adequate system of thought, able to face the different kinds of problems
that the placing of the human remains raises both at a ritual, symbolic, and at a logistical
level.
While monumental 19th century cemeteries (such as the Père Lachaise in Paris or the
Monumental cemeteries in several Italian towns), became more and more archives and
open-air museums, subjected to a particular kind of “death-tourism” or pilgrimage
(Walter, 1993), contemporary spaces for burials, especially in the urban context, have few
monuments, which have been substituted by functional buildings able to contain
thousands of serial niches disposed on different levels. These places evoke the lack of
space, rather than of remembrance, and make it hard for the visitor to find the suitable
conditions to remain near the grave, and think or pray; as we will try to show later, people
go to visit to visit graves in a functional mood, and spend there just the small amount of
time needed to clean up, or change and water flowers, where this task is not entrusted to
flower shops that propose different kinds of maintenance contracts for people who rarely
have the opportunity, the time or the will to visit the graves of their relatives.
The aim of the present paper is to contribute, through three case studies from
Piedmont (North-West of Italy), to the growth of a specific, interdisciplinary field of
study about cemeteries. Italian cemeteries have not yet been subjected to research carried
out with an anthropological methodology, based on direct observation, interviews with
visitors, life histories, as in the case of Francis’s, Kellaher’s and Neophytou’s work
(Francis, Kellaher & Neophytou, 2005). We share with these authors the idea of the
cemetery as a specific anthropological field, as well as of the importance of studying
practices, ideas and meanings attributed to the cemetery by those who frequent the place

4
or who work in it. However whilst the research carried out by the above three scholars in
London is based on comparison, between different urban cemeteries on a religious and
ethnic basis, our aim is to compare different kinds of cemeteries on a geographical basis.
The research project, entitled “Place and cult of the dead in Piedmont. What funerary
culture for the future?”, was developed in two years (from January 2008 to January 2010)
and focused on the study of 7 contemporary cemeteries in Piedmont: the “Parco”
cemetery in Turin, the cemeteries of Cuneo, Novara, Fossano, Ivrea, Trino and Torre
Pellice. These cemeteries can be considered as a representative sample of the area: Turin,
the capital of the region, is an industrial town with a population of almost one million
inhabitants; Cuneo and Novara are towns of regional importance, capitals of provinces,
while Fossano, Ivrea, Trino and Torre Pellice are medium or small size towns located in
areas with different geographical, demographic and historical characteristics6.
The interdisciplinary approach of the research reflects the will to work on the
construction of a common ground of ideas, interpretation, bibliography, and theories, thus
establishing a dialogue, particularly between the anthropological and the historical
perspectives. We believe this is a preferential way to approach the complexity of the
cemetery, a reality that offers a rich and largely unexplored field of study.
In the present article we focus mainly on three of these cemeteries: the “Parco”
cemetery in Turin, the cemetery of Fossano and that of Torre Pellice. These 3 places
together represent a good sample of the situation of cemeteries in Piedmont: the first one
is in fact a wide urban cemetery, inaugurated in 1972 i view of the rapid growth of the
urban population, and it has been expanding since its foundation; the most recent
extension, with the building of a new section of the cemetery, the so-called “Memory
Hill”, which contains approximately ten thousand niches, shows a sort of “cemeterial
gigantism”, as an officer of the “Parco” cemetery defined this project during an interview.
This first case is thus one of a recent, modern cemetery, where it’s possible to observe the
evolution in burials, gravestones, funeral inscriptions and decorations of the tomb over the
last 40 years. In the final section of this article we will stress the way these
transformations tell us something about society and the way people deal with death and
memory.

6
The project was coordinated by the “Ariodante Fabretti” Foundation, and financed by the CRT
Foundation. The research team was interdisciplinary, composed by three researchers: an historian, Luca
Prestia, and two anthropologists, Alessandro Gusman and Cristina Vargas.

5
 Fossano, with about 24.000 inhabitants, is instead a medium-size center situated near
the famous area of the Langhe. It is representative of a category of small, bourgeois
towns, and the cemetery reflects this status, even if the most recent section shows a trend
towards a more urban-kind of shape, with two-level buildings instead of family vaults,
due to problem in finding space for burials.
The third case, Torre Pellice, is a small town with about 4.500 inhabitants, situated in
the mountains (Val Pellice); this center is very interesting for its history, for the valley has
been inhabited by a religious minority (Chiesa Evangelica Valdese) since the 13th century.
In Torre Pellice the cemetery is municipal, with Catholic and Valdese tombs side by side,
but in other small centers of the valley there are still separate cemeteries for the different
religious confessions. This is the case for example of Angrogna, where the presence of 3
cemeteries (Catholic, Valdese and municipal) in a town of about 700 inhabitants shows
the importance of this institution for the maintenance of the identity of the religious
minority, even if, as we’ll try to show later, the differences among these cemeteries are
not as obvious as one may think.

2. The anthropological perspective

Three key words can synthesize our approach to the anthropological study of
cemeteries: body, culture and place. Contemporary anthropology has paid a particular
attention to the human body, considering it not as a naturally given reality but as a bio-
cultural construction. Culture, in this perspective, is considered as an incorporated
(Csordas, 1990; Scheper-Hughes & Lock, 1987; Lock, 1993) and located (Low &
Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003) phenomenon. As Van Gennep wrote in the early twentieth
century, human beings treat their body as a piece of wood, shaping it, transforming it and
modelling it. For human beings across cultures, these transformations are part of the
complex process of “constructing humanity” (Remotti, 1999).
In the same way, the dead body is, in almost all human societies, highly significant
too. There is, in fact, a “social life” of the corpse (Favole, 2003). The dead body arouses
ambivalent emotions or fears. It is at the same time the last remains of a beloved person
and a physical evidence of our own mortality. The destiny of the corpse is therefore an
important practical and symbolic social concern for all societies.

6
 Different models of treatment of the dead body imply different conceptions of the
living body, often charged with a cosmological value. These models are part of more or
less complex ritual cycles. Practices such as inhumation, cremation, tumulation (burial in
a family vault or in a niche) deeply differ one from the other, even if differences are not
always explicit or conscious for social actors. Even if these choices may be directed by
practical and economic reasons, each one of them imply precise cultural and symbolic
meanings, in the same way, each “place of the dead” expresses different attitudes towards
life and death.
As we noted above, cemetery research has tended to be limited and sporadic in many
senses in Italy and in the rest of Europe too. This is particularly true for anthropology:
there are, in fact, very few anthropological researches about contemporary cemeteries in
Europe. Anthropologists have often observed and described cemeteries and funerary
practices in other cultures, and the social and cultural importance of the “places of the
dead” has often been outlined for the societies of the “others”, but, for many reasons,
these insights have rarely been used to analyze and interpret the phenomenology we can
find in western society.
At the beginning of the Seventies, Johannes Fabian, analyzing anthropological
contributions in the field of death studies, noted that anthropology had concentrated its
disciplinary efforts in the study of “how others die”, leaving the analysis of death related
models of behaviour «at a safe distance of the core of one’s own society» (Fabian, 1972,
p. 139). This anthropological approach was grounded in philosophical ideas regarding
others or otherness . The vagueness of the term “other” allowed anthropologists to create
a distance between their own social self and that of the subjects of their studies, avoiding
at the same time the use of expressions as “savages” or “primitives” that had become, in
those years, less tolerable in scientific language.
Nowadays the distance between the “self” and the “other” is partially reduced, and
allows a more reflexive approach; moreover, a certain number of anthropological research
on death in urban Western societies have been published, partly filling the lack criticized
by Fabian, even if not specifically focused on cemeteries. In parallel, there is a rich
tradition of anthropological studies about death, funeral rites and “places of the dead”
across cultures that can be helpful when approaching the complex subject we are dealing
with.

7
 One of the most important contributions to the anthropology of death is Robert
Hertz’s seminal essay “Contribution to the study of the collective representation of death”
(Hertz, 1907), in which death is seen as a collective phenomenon and funeral rite is
considered as a social process, a passage (Van Gennep, 1909), involving the
transformation of the corpse, the destiny of the soul and the society of the survivors.
Through funeral rites «society ensures its own continuity in the face of the impermanence
of its members» (Goody, 1962, p. 26-27).
Hertz’s ideas have been developed and revisited by Maurice Bloch and Robert Parry
(Bloch & Perry, 1982). Stressing the importance of the symbols of fertility in death
rituals, the two authors consider a funeral rite not only as an attempt to restore the social
order menaced by death, but as an opportunity to construct that social order and to
represent it as eternal.
From this perspective the cemetery can be seen as a spatial symbol of the continuity
of a social group or of the society itself which «can be used to construct an idealised map
of the permanent social order» (ibid., p. 35).
For the social actors, the construction of a “place of the dead” offers the opportunity
to create a representation of the society of the living. So the construction of a “place of the
dead” and of a cult of the dead is embedded within the complex dynamics of social
interaction and self representation in the collective and in the individual level. The grave,
in this perspective, can be seen as a concrete, material symbol of the dead person.
As already stated, one of the most interesting anthropological insights on the topic of
cemeteries in Western societies can be found in The Secret Cemetery (Francis, Kellaher &
Neophytou, 2005). One of the main focuses of the research of these three authors was the
analysis of the cemetery from the point of view of those who “use” this particular space,
showing how the cemetery is, at the same time, a public and an intimate - secret - place
for the mourners, which becomes a part of the daily process of coping with the
bereavement. In the words of the authors: «Survivors are often changed by the experience
of death, and many become involved in a process of meaning making, which can be
enacted and observed in the cemetery as well as at home». From this point of view the
research is not only a study of the cemetery as a meaningful place, but it is also a study of
what cemeteries can tell us about the living, or, more precisely, about «Londoners’

8
present attitudes towards death, nature and culture, religion, society and the individual at
the end of modernity» (Francis, Kellaher & Neophytou, 2005, p. 26).
Even if a research as The secret cemetery clearly shows the potential of an
anthropological approach to cemeteries, so far in Italy there is a complete lack of research
carried out with an ethnological or cross-cultural perspective. This lack of information
often leads to the use of data, theories and interpretations based on other European
realities to trace policies for Italian cemeteries. Nowadays it is clear that, even if there are
similarities between different realities in the European world, it would be wrong to expect
uniformity in that complex and multicultural reality which is often referred to as “the
West”. Therefore our research was conceived as a study of the present Italian situation in
order to trace some proposals for the future of the cemetery in Piedmont, based on a
careful consideration of how this institution is experienced and perceived by people.
This research was developed at a particular moment, when there was a change in the
legislation for cemeteries and for funerary rites: in Italy, while the diffusion of cremation
is relatively low (in 2007 cremation was chosen in 10% of deaths), in northern cities as
Turin or Milan7, cremation is the choice in more than 50% of deaths. In both regions a
law which permits the scattering of the ashes has been approved during the last few
years8: this legislation is absolutely new for Italy, where it was compulsory to preserve
the ashes in a niche at the cemetery or in specific spaces at the crematorium. It is thus
possible to hypothesize that this new law will lead to the birth of new rites and practices,
dislocated from the traditional “space of the dead”, more individualized and private, as it
is already the case in other European Countries. Simultaneously, there is a wide
perception of a deep crisis in funeral rites and spaces, often perceived by people as
inadequate or unsatisfactory.
Should all these elements lead us to the conclusion that the cemetery is an obsolete
institution, whose importance for the society and for the individuals is disappearing? Is
Italian society giving up a ritual, collective “place of the dead”, or exchanging this
physical space for a virtual, individual space? Is there still a “cult of the dead”, usually

7
The case of Turin shows the exponential increase of the number of cremations related to the number of
deaths in these cities: while in 1995 it was a 19%, percentage has reached the 40% on 2005 and estimated
data for 2006 and 2007 shows a similar progression.
8
In Piedmont this law (the Legge Regionale Piedmont n. 20) has been approved the 2nd November 2007
and it follows, with some mending, the Legge n. 419/2007 concerning the dispositions on the matter of
conservation, scattering and custody of the ashes.

9
considered as a rooted Italian tradition made of rituals, meanings, symbols, actions,
memories, beliefs and objects? Can we speak about a contemporary “funerary culture” or
is modern society, as some scholars have outlined (Thomas, 1976), losing the possibility
to use culture as a collective instrument to redefine life and death and to cope with the
bereavement?
In the context we have described, it is essential to remark, as many anthropologists
and historians have done, that the cemetery is not only a “functional” space. The cemetery
is one particular social place, the “place of the dead”: one of the spaces where the
collective response to death takes place. The cemetery is as a locus for collective and
personal memory, a physical expression of the complex flow of ideas, meanings and
practices that each society elaborates about death, a testimony of history and a mirror of
social processes. It is, also, as our first interviews have shown, a space for sociability and
for communication.
In order to understand the important transformations of the cemetery in northern Italy
over the last fifty years, to analyze the reasons of the crisis, and to explore the new
possibilities for the future of this institution, we need to understand the collective and the
individual meaning of this particular space. What does a person do when he or she is
visiting the cemetery? How often do they visit the cemetery? What is the meaning of
his/her actions? What do the objects we find on the tombstones, the words, the activities
and rituals which take place inside the cemetery mean to people?
We also need to look at the cemetery not only as an urban structure with a precise
practical management, regulations and efficacy, but as a meaningful place or, as we will
try to show in the following section, as a particular kind of landscape.

3. The cemetery as a landscape

When we cross the front door of the large Parco cemetery in Turin, or we gaze
through the half-closed doors of a small protestant rural churchyard in the Pellice Valley,
we see a delimited landscape. Surrounded by walls, the place of the dead is separated
from the surroundings, but at the same time is still a part of the urban context, in the first
case, or of the beautiful alpine landscape of mountains and hills in the second.
The first impression a visitor has while entering Parco cemetery is that he’s entering
a sort of “town at the borders of the town”, with roads, signs, areas with trees and

10
benches, and buildings. On the contrary, the churchyard in the Pellice Valley reminds us
of a small, quiet garden situated on the back of a cottage. This is the landscape the visitor
initially sees, but then, little by little, going back to the same places different times, we
began to discern a “second landscape”, less uniform, separated by invisible lines and
pathways, structured by time, and subjected to a process of constant change (Hirsch,
1995). Even if they are deeply different, both cemeterial landscapes are in fact the result
of human activities, practices and ideas, and of the interaction of these with characteristics
of the local environment. We can therefore affirm that cemetery is a particular kind of
landscape, but, to understand the implications of this assertion, we should begin with a
definition of “landscape” and of the use this concept has in anthropology.
An interest in the influence of the environment and of the material conditions in
which cultural practices are inscribed has been present in anthropology since its origins,
but only in the last two decades, together with the achievement of the idea of culture as an
embodied and localised phenomenon, the interaction between bodies, cultures and spaces
has become a central concern for anthropologists and the concept of “landscape” has been
introduced as a category in anthropology.
As Setha Low and Denise Lawrence Zúñiga have remarked, people modify the
physical space they inhabit, transforming it in an “inscribed space”, where they leave an
enduring record of their presence; at the same time, «people are influenced by the
environment that surrounds them, and take qualities of that environment into themselves»
(Low & Lawrence Zúñiga, 2003, p. 14). This interaction can be considered as reciprocal,
and implies a close relationship between people and place, in which physical settings,
personal ideas, attitudes, behaviours and experiences and cosmological, public, social and
economical domains are involved. The concept of “landscape” can thus be a key to
explain and to understand the complex interaction between space, environment, society,
culture, agency, and time.
In his Landscape Ecology, Vittorio Ingegnoli underlines how in the history of the
concept of “landscape” it is possible to find two different semantic areas. A “landscape”
can be defined as a “perception of aesthetic view” or as a “mosaic of interacting natural
elements” (Ingegnoli, 2002, p. 3). The first definition was predominant for a long period
of time: the word landscape derived from the Dutch landschap, and its first usage in
English, in 1598, was connected with the painter’s representation of a tract of land. The

11
emphasis here is on the perceptive, visual, and aesthetic aspects of a place. As Arnol
Berleant notices, this meaning was still prevailing in 1933, when the Oxford English
Dictionary defined “landscape” as «a view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as
can be taken in a glance from one point of view» (Berleant, 2004, p. 33), but it was
partially changed in 1987, when the definition on the same dictionary was: «a tract of land
with its distinguishing characteristics and features, especially considered as a product of
modifying processes and agents» (ibid.); this latter definition implies the relation between
landscape and human activities.
This transformation in the definition of “landscape” clearly shows a shift towards a
new emphasis on the interactive level, on the process of building a landscape as
contrasting with the static representation “landscape” indicated in the earlier definition.
For, as Barbara Bender stresses, «Landscape is time materializing; landscapes, like time,
never stand still» (Bender, 2003, p. 3). Even when we visit several times a place, it is
never the same place; it is continuously altered both physically and symbolically through
the actions of the people frequenting it.
Through this idea of landscape as a dynamic process, it becomes possible to start
perceiving the “second landscape” and understanding the relationships that constituted the
landscape itself and are still in the process of re-building it continuously.
This perspective found a specific application in contemporary anthropology, among
others in the research Tim Ingold carried out in the early Nineties. Like in other sectors of
the anthropological research, a phenomenological perspective, focusing on an embodied
and multisensory approach, seems to be appropriate for the study of landscapes (Tilley,
1994). The “dwelling perspective” Ingold elaborated regarding material culture can be
fruitfully applied in the study of landscape too, as the author himself showed in an article
entitled “The temporality of the landscape” (Ingold, 1993). In Ingold’s view, the
landscape is an environment that constitutes an enduring record of the activities of the
generations that have inhabited a particular space, and, in doing so, have left there
something of themselves. From this point of view temporality and spatiality are linked in
the place and in the experience of the place people construct in their everyday life.
Paraphrasing Ingold we can say that the landscape - in our case, the cemetery - tells, or
rather is, a story.

12
 The cemetery is a place “charged with temporality” - to quote Ingold - it is what we
can call, with Baktin and Ingold himself, a chronotope: a place where temporality takes
on a palpable form.
In cemeteries, pieces of the local history are inscribed in the space. For example, in
the Pellice Valley, from the small Waldensian churchyard of Angrogna it is possible to
see another churchyard, the catholic one, and, far down, the public cemetery of Torre
Pellice, a secular space. In this spatial division one can catch a glimpse of the history of
the relationship between Catholics and Waldesians.
There is in fact a twofold connection between the cemetery as a landscape and
temporality: in the cemetery we can perceive a meaningful connection between collective
history, long-term social and cultural processes and individual experiences, memories and
choices. Personal memories are also palpably present in objects and inscriptions: a stone
posed a hundred years ago and almost impossible to read, or a recent grave filled with
personal objects, such as chocolates, plastic cards, notes, flowers, as we will see in the
next section.
On the aesthetic level, as Julie Rugg notices, «As the need for cemeteries became
apparent in the late 18th and early 19th century, so debate took place on what should be the
defining features of this new architectural form» (Rugg, 1998, p. 120).
The transformations the cemetery has been going through during the last century
have been remarkable. The crowded landscape of monumental cemeteries, with family
vaults, commemorative statues and artistic sculptures has given space to new urban
structures, often designed with a dominant criterion of architectonical rationality in
which, somehow, the idea of death is less represented and less present.
As in other European countries, the Ninteenth century’s monumental cemetery in
northern Italy is now undergoing a process of “requalification” and in many cities it is
considered a sort of open air museum, with an important historical and artistic value. The
cemetery is seen as a cultural heritage with a tourist potential, something that needs to be
preserved, protected and cared for. The Monumental Cemetery of Turin, for example, is
listed by the ASCE9 as one of the significant cemeteries in Europe. To be buried in these
cemeteries is often considered a privilege, a way of asserting the social prestige of a
family. But in Turin, as in other monumental cemeteries, no more extensions are possible,

9
Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe.

13
and most of the burials today take place in the new Parco cemetery, or in other smaller
areas.
New cemeteries, or recent sections of older ones, built after the second world war to
face the growth of population in the urban setting, on the contrary, are usually considered
merely functional spaces, places whose main characteristic is uniformity (Sozzi, 2007);
the result is a landscape characterized by serial graves and burial niches; a peripheral,
impersonal, almost bureaucratic place, a “non-place”, to use Marc Auge’s expression. In
the sample of our research, a clear example of this “new cemetery” is the Parco cemetery
in Turin.
These transformations in cemeterial landscapes are obviously not only the results of
social changes and population growth; regulations and decisions of the management have
a strong influence on this process too (Sloane, 1995).
In our research, we investigated cemeteries as specific landscapes, denoting an idea
about the use of public space. We suggest that cemeterial regulations, together with
people’s practices, contribute to create a specific landscape for the cemetery, more or less
able to satisfy the emotional and memorial needs of the visitors.
The 3 cemeteries considered show significant differences at this regard.

1) Cimitero Parco: the area occupied by the cemetery is wide. Conceived as a garden
cemetery, following the example of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, this place has been
transformed several times in the almost 40 years of its history. In the oldest section,
niches posed on lateral walls alternate with a number of graves in the ground, with paths
surrounding regular squares with a number of tombs variable between 6 and 12, or
individual or familiar tombs disposed one near the other in the garden.
Going towards the most recent sections of the area, garden tombs leave room more
and more to a different kind of architecture, composed mostly by square-plan areas. The
walls forming the four sides of the square have 3 levels of niches, and the center of the
structure has a garden, with plants and in some cases even benches where to sit. There are
10 of these structures.

Figure 1a. Parco cemetery, an overview

Figure 1b. Parco cemetery, the burial niches area

14
 The recent section, containing niches of the latest ten years, consist of 2-level
buildings; here the space for nature, grass and trees is restricted, transforming the idea of
the cemetery as a park into something more similar to the urban setting. There’s then a
further section, the “Memory Hill”,completed in 2009, that tries to recover a place for
nature, while it is even more uniform and “urbanized”, with its approximately ten
thousand niches.
Inside the Parco cemetery, the main paths are tarmac roads, with a regularcity bus
service going around every 20 minutes, in order to take people near the area where their
deads are buried. Authorised visitors can also acces by car.
+The dimension and the kind of organization this cemetery has, especially in the
newest sections where the place for nature and the possibility to stop for a while are very
few, make the Parco cemetery almost a de-ritualized place of burial. The initial idea of a
park, including the possibility to walk around, stopping and sitting down, has been
changed by more recent interventions, transforming the cemetery mostly in a functional
area, where people go briefly to take care of the tomb or the niche, and where it is
difficult to construct one’s own path through the cemetery. In our frequent visits to the
Parco cemetery we observed that people usually go directly to the area where their
relatives are buried, and leave the cemetery as soon as they finish their practical activity
on the tombs (cleaning, changing or watering flowers, …).
In the following section we will show that the relative anonymity and uniformity of
the niches, which are nowadays the most common kind of burial, leave room for a
particular creativity which finds its expression in funeral inscriptions and decoration of
the tombs.
2) Fossano: this cemetery is totally different from the previous one; if the first is
characterized by uniformity and low buildings (with the exception of the 3-levels
structures), the cemetery of Fossano is characterized by heterogeneity. The tombs here,
mostly family vaults, with a limited number of niches (if compared with the Parco
cemetery), are individual buildings, usually vertical, each one presenting a different shape
and decoration. Epitaphs are very few and simple, the distinguishing point being the
architecture of the tomb.
According to some testimonies we collected during our investigations, the cemetery
has been expanded several times in the last decades, and today presents in effect a long

15
and narrow shape, but the differences among the sections are not remarkable.
Transformations over time are very few, with the exception of a small number of tombs
with a modern shape. There are also a limited number of garden tombs, but the general
aspect of the cemetery is that of a bourgeois town, on the model of 19th century French
cemetery, with individual buildings and doors separating the vaults from the outside,
keeping them apart from the neighbors.
This general shape began to change with the construction of 2-levels buildings with
niches in the most recent area of the cemetery, showing that the problem of burial space is
now common even in medium-size centers.

Figure 2. Fossano cemetery, family vaults.

3) Torre Pellice: if the cemetery of Fossano differs considerably from that of Turin, the
cemetery of Torre Pellice is different from both of the other two.
This space clearly shows the mutual influences between the two main religious
groups of the valley. The general aspect of the cemetery is in fact sober, a characteristic of
protestant cemeteries, with few decorated garden tombs, an evident uniformity in the use
of types and decorations, and small and simple gravestones. Instead of the general
impression of uniformity, different religious identities are still visible in some aspects,
especially in the use of verses from the Bible as epitaph in the Valdese tombs, which is
the most evident sign of differentiation (see fig. 4).
The use of pictures on the gravestones, on the contrary, reflects clearly a more
catholic attitude. Even if a number of Valdese tombs has no pictures, this practice has
become more and more common in the last 30 years, according to what a local Valdese
pastor told us, as an influence of the catholic group. It should be noted that other Valdese
cemeteries in the valley forbid the use of pictures with a specific clause in the regulation.

Figure 3. Torre Pellice: the cemetery.

Even where there are separated cemeteries for the different religious groups, as in the
case of Angrogna cited above, the two different spaces show a high level of uniformity,
with garden style and a general sobriety, the only real sign of religious identity being once
more the use of biblical verses as inscriptions on the gravestones.

16
 The 3 examples show different conceptions of the cemetery as a space and as a
landscape, which reflect, at least in part, the organization of the 3 urban spaces. The
architecture of the cemetery of Fossano shows a more individualistic and private approach
to death, and the richness and dimension of the tombs are not just a sign of devotion and
respect, but also a way to symbolize and reaffirm, even through death, the social status of
the deceased, as well as of the family. This seems to reflect the bourgeois conception of a
town with individual houses. Women especially take care of the tomb in the same way
they do with their own houses. As we will see later, cleaning up is the main and most
social activity in the cemetery, and can take even quite a long time (1-2 hours), one or
more times a week.
If in this cemetery individualization and continuity over time are the main
characteristics, Parco cemetery in Turin shows instead a larger uniformity in the graves,
but a remarkable discontinuity over time, which makes it particularly interesting in
observing the transformations in funeral culture along the last 3 decades.
Finally, the case of Torre Pellice, with mutual influences of the Catholic and the
Valdese cultures, highlights the level of integration of the two religious groups in the
community; nevertheless, religious identities are reaffirmed through the use of few signs
of distinction.
The differences one could find in these three cemeteries induce us to reflect once
more about the relationship between the space of the living and that of the dead. As
Patrick Baudry has shown, in determining the place for the dead inside a society, social
relations among the living are reshaped continuously, constructing or reducing
boundaries, forming or dissolving connections (Baudry, 1999).
Yet, cemeteries are not only places for collective representations. Individual tombs,
with the practices and the symbols connected to them, are means to express the family
and personal status, and to shape a particular kind of memory.

4. Practices, gravestones, self representation

The second aspect on which we have concentrated our attention is the private practice
of taking care and decorating the tombs, where ritual and practical acts often merge,
forming a particular way of “cult of the dead”.

17
 Here also it is a matter of space, and how it is transformed by human actions. The
cemetery is an “under construction” space; a place actively modified through human
practices and choices, a “taskscape” to quote Tim Ingold once more.
While in a collective sense the cemetery offers an opportunity to create a spatial
representation of society, at the individual level, through gravestones, objects and actions,
it is possible to enact a process of self-presentation. The care of the grave, and all the
activities, objects and symbols connected with it are, at the same time, a way of keeping
the memory of a beloved person alive, and a way of creating or maintaining a self-
presentation in which are involved the identity of the subject, of the deceased, and of the
family as a whole.
Along with a private, subjective, meaning, the cemetery also offers an opportunity to
create a representation of the society as a whole. At the local level, in each of the
cemeteries we have considered until now, we can observe specific choices in the spatial
organization or in management; these are expression of different aspects of social life: in
Turin, for example, the idea of “security” is so strong that a recently approved project will
include the positioning of cameras and the presence of private surveillance agents. The
request of an “under control” space comes from people as well as from the organizers,
and is closedly linked with a wide perception of “insecurity” and “uncertainty”
(Appadurai, 2005). In the last years, insecurity and uncertainty, real situations heavily
amplified by the mass media, have become a central worry for people, especially in urban
centers in Italy, and they have led to other phenomena, such as a generalized fear of “the
other”, xenofobia and expressions of racism. As in the new policies for the Parco
cemetery, the public response to these situations has been oriented to an increasing
amount of “control” and surveillance in every aspect of daily life.
In a collective sense the policies, the rules and the aesthetic principles that organize
the cemetery space are linked with particular ideas about “how is” and about “how should
be” the society of the living. These ideas, as we have seen in the Turin example, are
connected with social dynamics in a bidirectional way: as Lawrence Taylor notices “The
churches, states, and within them the various orders and groups with special interests, all
helped to elaborate a rich corpus of death imagery as well as ritual - all of which served to
orient the emotions (we could add, the behaviour) as well as beliefs of their
people”(Taylor, 1989, p. 150).

18
 We can consider these ideas and practices as cultural forms which are attempts to
reframe death, to assert or construct durable social structures or moral authorities, to
organize human experience. These practices and ideas present a long term flux that
historians as Michel Vovelle or Philippe Ariés have followed over the centuries,
reconstructing the transformations of the concept of death in Western mentality and the
incidence of these transformations on the funeral practices and on the organization of the
“places of the dead” over the centuries.
But even if it is possible to recognize the presence of major historical trends in the
concept of death and in attitudes towards death, focusing our attention on the local level
and on the short term period, we can observe an important heterogeneity of practices and
ideas. This variability is, first of all, cross-cultural: different models of funeral rites,
attitudes and ideas related to death co-exist in the same period of time in different cultural
or geographic areas and each of these models present different patterns of variation over
time. Especially in the case of complex or multicultural societies, the differences in
attitudes and practices related to death can be clearly perceived inside the same society,
among different groups sharing a common social space.
On the other hand, as we have noticed before, there is an individual level related to
personal memories and experiences that influences directly the way of ritualizing death,
with significant differences even among families and individuals.
In every social context there are, in synthesis, different trends on the flow of
meaning. These different directions can be more or less pronounced: in certain cases local
communities, specific groups and individuals can reapropriate symbols, transform
practices and rituals, interpret and elaborate their own experience of death and grieve in
ways that can differ strongly from one case to another, diverging in different ways from
what we can call the “dominant trend”. In some cases, when there is tension or conflict
between different religious or social models of death representation, the cemetery itself
can become a “contested space” (Bennett, 1994).
While the cemetery can be seen as spatial representation of society, the grave, the
family vault or the niche are private spaces, where it is possible to enact a process of self-
representation, and/or to create a representation of the beloved dead. The burial niche, for
example, apparently uniformed to all the others niches, can be the place to express many
different meanings: cultural identity or religious beliefs, social status, certain traits of the

19
character of the deceased, the decorum of the family and their constant presence in the
cemetery. In a context of structural homogeneity, there is a strong tendency towards
personalization, as we will try to explain in detail.
Even if graves and niches are generally leased for a limited period of time10, these
places are perceived by people as a “private places”, where they can mark their own
signs, transforming the niche or the grave into something familiar. The use people make
of the assigned space shows once more remarkable differences among the 3 cemeteries
taken into account, but also inside the same cemetery, especially in the case of the Parco
cemetery in Turin. These variations are ascribable to the dimension and shape of the
tomb, to religious identity and to the idea of “social duty”, as a man expressed during an
interview.
The idea of taking care of the grave as a “social duty” is particularly interesting. The
care of the grave or the niche is not only a possibility for mourners, but it is a duty as well.
According to cemetery regulations, if a family doesn’t take care of the grave, after a
relatively short period of time (a few months or, however, less than a year), it loses the
right to personalize the grave: from that moment, the care of that particular grave will be
carried out by the cleaning staff of the cemetery. There is also a less institutional sense in
the idea of “social duty”, connected with the “bad impression” an uncared grave would
produce on other visitors.
From this point of view, the individual practices enacted by mourners in taking care
of a grave can be seen as social performances (Goffman, 1959). In these actions there is a
communicative and relational intent, which produces an impression of the self to the
others. Mourners are social actors, their agency, implicitly or explicitly, takes part in the
interactive process of establishing a social identity.
During interviews, people said that it is through common, everyday activities that
they find more solace: people usually spend some time cleaning up the tomb, changing or
arranging flowers, watering plants, and so on, as if they were doing housework. It is a
“normal” activity, which makes it possible to feel that life is going on in spite of the death
of the loved person, recreating, at least in part, a familiar situation. In this context it is
common for mourners to start talking with the deceased, telling him or her about the other
members of the family, asking for advice or just chatting.
10
The graves are conceded for a period of 10 to 15 years. The niches are conceded for a maximum of 40
years.

20
 This is especially true for the cemetery of Fossano, where family vaults are big and
require some time to be cleaned and cared for. According to some women we
interviewed, this activity can take even 1-2 hours, and it is usually done one or more times
a week.
We can consider the vault as a material symbol of the permanence of the family
group after death. In the family vault, the representational process is enacted in different
moments: from the decision to purchase a vault, to the daily maintenance of it, year after
year. If a rich and beautiful vault is itself an evidence of the social status of the family, a
well cared vault, is, somehow, a sign of the vitality, the presence and the solidity of a
family group.
The symbolic connection between the family house and the family vault is visible as
well in the way of taking care of these two spaces. Family vaults must be “decorous” as
houses. The concept of “decorum” was mentioned at different moments in the interviews
and it appears solidly rooted espetially in middle-aged women.
The way in which a woman takes care of the family vault is part of the same
“decorum” she must show in the care of the house she keeps. She (or, in some cases, he)
should show the same attention to detail (like having always perfectly clean window
panes or fresh flowers) and the same devotion she/he dedicates to caring for the home. As
it was predictable, taking care of the tomb is mainly a female activity, even if it is
possible to see some men carrying out this activity.
It is also common, again especially for women, to start chatting with other people
while cleaning. The subjects of conversation, they told us, are not at all confined to death
and the deceased, but are various. The cemetery becomes in this way a social place, where
people spend time not only praying or in contemplation, but mainly doing practical
activities and socializing with other people.
The dimension and the relative proximity of the cemetery of Fossano to the town
(there is also a bus service) make the frequentation of this place quite high, if compared
with the situation of bigger urban centers. Some women visit the cemetery in small
groups. Among the 3 cemeteries we have considered, that of Fossano is the only place of
easy socialization, and where people spend a good amount of time.
Regarding Torre Pellice and its cemetery, it is possible to observe that, in accordance
with the protestant tradition, people do not visit the cemetery frequently, but just once in a

21
while to cut the grass and clean the grave. These activities are done in a functional mood,
not spending more time than is necessary, and with a particular attention to soberness.
There is less personalization and every excess is avoided.
In Torre Pellice’s cemetery catholic and waldensian graves, family vaults or niches
are not separated. For a foreigner, who doesn’t know the history of each family or doesn’t
recognize surnames, it is difficult, at a first sigh, to distinguish Waldesian from Catholic
graves.
The most visible sign of protestant identity, as a local Waldensian pastor told us, is
the choice of the verse on the gravestone. Even if there are a number of “codified” verses
which recur frequently, there is also the possibility to personalize, choosing a verse which
says something about the deceased.
There have been reciprocal influences between waldesians and catholics: the
photograph, for example, very uncommon in the protestant tradition, is, on the contrary,
present in most Waldensian graves.
Parco cemetery is a very interesting example, for it is the only one where it is
possible to observe a significant transformation of practices over time and for the
presence, within the same walls, of an Islamic and of a Protestant (mostly Waldensian)
section.
The huge dimension of the cemetery, the fact that it is located in a suburban area of
the town, together with a more “urban” attitude of people, make it difficult to meet
someone to talk with during the visit, which is usually quick and finalized to bringing
flowers or cleaning.
It is quite uncommon to see people sitting down, praying or spending time near the
tomb; shadow in the area is very limited, and there are just a few benches, so that staying
for more than a few minutes is quite uncomfortable. The nearby florists offer a weekly or
daily service of “flower changing” for those families that can not visit often the cemetery.
When it was opened, this cemetery was conceived mostly as a functional, more
“professionalized” area for burials. The vast space, as we have described before, was
surrounded by a wall and organized into different square sections for inumations or burial
niches. This model, with some architectural improvements, has been maintaned until
today.

22
 One may expect that in such a situation a high level of uniformity and anonymity
should characterize the landscape, in particular in the niches’ sections. It is thus
particularly interesting to notice how the attitude towards tomb decorations and
inscriptions has varied in the last decades.

In the 70s’, niches showed a high level of uniformity. This is partly caused by a rigid
set of rules imposed by the administration. In fact, the shape and the material of the
gravestone, was defined by cemeterial regulations. It was compulsory to use a common
type and color for the epitaph. Portrait pictures were all black and white, small head and
shoulders photographs, showing the deceased in a solemn, standardized pose. Epitaphs –
where present – were usually simple and almost impersonal, with sentences such as
“Riposa in pace” (“Rest in peace”), “In memoria” (“In loving memory”) or “I tuoi cari”
(Your beloved ones).

Figure 4. Parco cemetery, niches (year 1974)

Starting from the 80s’, elements of individual differentiation began to be introduced,

such as the use of bigger photographs, in colour, in a central position on the gravestone.
Even if the writings were still prevalently similar to those used during the Seventies, in
some of them a few, more personalized words are present. We can observe, in many
cases, flowervases, religious images and lights, mostly absent in the former decade.
This trend towards personalization is even more stressed during the Ninethies, even if
the shape of the niches still remains identical in all cases. In the photographs, now almost
always at the center of the gravestone, we can see the decesead person smiling, dressed in
his or her usual clothes, in familiar locations. We find differet shapes of flowerpots and
lights. The “traditional” crucifix is not necessarly present and it is often replaced by
religious images, in particular Holy Mary and Jesus Christ. In some epitaphs, the name of
the closest members of the family or familiar words as “mamma” (mom) and “papà”
(dad) appear showing an increasing tendency to personalization and intimacy.

Figure 5. Parco cemetery, niches (year 1996).

23
 In the newest sections of the cemetery, personalization becomes the main
characteristic of the niches because it now involves not only the objects, but also the
gravestone. New shapes and colors in the characters of the epitaph have been introduced:
golden yellow, and then blue, red, cyan, instead of the black or dark grey. In some cases
new shapes and decorations or bas-reliefs have been introduced.
Even the religious images are more personalized and are not limited to the cross, the
only symbol which was present in the Seventies. Among the most frequent images we
find Padre Pio, recently canonized, whose cult has rapidly increased in recent years, we
also find angels and other saints, to whom the deceased was probably devoted.
Most of the recent epitaphs are not simple and codified sentences, but express in a
personal form some aspects of the life and of the character of the deceased. Pictures are
used as a way of expressing something about the dead, too. It is now common to find
photographs portraying the person not in a static and predefined posture, but at work, or
doing an activity such as gardening or cycling; with a uniform; in special locations, or in
landscapes with a precise meaning for the deceased; such as marriage. In all these cases
the picture is a representation of the deceased in those moments which made that person,
somehow, unique.

Figure 6. Parco cemetery. Niches (years 2003-2004).

The recent sections of the cemetery are directed towards the representation of the
deceased as an individual who continues to maintain his/her personality even after death.
Some extreme examples of this recent trend can be found in niches filled with cards
(for Christmas, birthday, …), letters, gifts (chocolate, cigarettes, soft toys, lovebugs…),
signs (football team scarfs, t-shirt, emblems), aimed at constructing (or re-constructing)
the identity of the dead person, and at clearly distinguishing him/her among the others
who are buried in the same space
In re-constructing the identity of the beloved person, survivors re-create a memorial
representation of their everyday life experience with the deceased: continuity is
maintained through objects and words.
In these niches we can observe as well constant references to group-experiences,
remebering, for example a famous local football team, the Juventus, a souvenir from a
concert held in 2003, a short message signed by the whole group. The interaction thus,

24
involves more than a bi-directional symbolic relationship between the dead person and the
visitor; it involves a group who shared common interests and activities. The
representation of the identity of the dead person is linked to the use of representative
material symbols of his or her social network. At the same time the group itself is
recreated around the image of the deceased and is kept alive and reasserted.

Figure 7. Parco cemetery, a personalized niche

5. Conclusions
The three cases we have considered in this article - Turin, Fossano and Torre Pellice -
allow us to draw some conclusions and to raise a number of questions that we believe
should be addressed in future research.
In her article Cemeteries as Cultural Landscapes, Doris Francis, following Sloane
and Warner’s idea, affirms that funerary landscapes do not simply reflect and express the
history of cultural continuities and transformations of a community, these spaces also help
to write that history (Frances, 2003).
On the one hand, the cemeterial landscape is the result of social and cultural
dinamics. In this sense, it reflects the attitudes towards death in a precise moment or
context and, indirectly, it says something about the social structure and organization in a
more general sense. Cemeteries are thus powerful symbols of the permanence and
continuity of a society. As cultural landscapes, the “places of the dead” can be actively
used as instruments to construct and assert a precise social order or to define social
boundaries.
On the other hand, the fact that the cemetery is widely perceived as a mirror of self
and society leads people to enact a conscious process of self representation. Gravestones
and niches are, somehow, “portraits” of the deceased person. Through gravestones,
people also enact a representation of their own social self, emphasizing those
characterictics that are considered the most important and valuable. Among the values
expressed we find the decorum, the sobberness (in particular among Waldesians), the
presence and the strenght of a group, the national or ethnic identity and many others.
In these representative processes we notice a more or less strong influence of fashion
and mass media languages, one open question is how this languages is articulated with
religious beliefs, culture and tradition in the birth of a new “cult of the dead”.

25
 It was curious that in some cases, in the Parco cemetery of Turin, the rituality
involved the niches of living people. The idea of buying the niche for one’s own, even
many years before death, has been present in Italian tradition since the 19th century,
nevertheless, it was unexpected for us to find a ritual approach to those empty graves. In
fact, some people take care of those graves not only in a practical sense (keeping them
clean, for example), but also in a ritual sense: placing flowers, objects, religious images
and candles, as if those spaces were dedicated to the memory of an already deceased
person. A closer look shows that in most cases the niches or graves belong to older
people. We can interpret this phenomenon, which is not present in any of the other
cemeteries considered in the research, as a consequence of the strong process of
individualization of the society, as a result of the lack of a social space for older people
or, using Elias’ words, as an expression of the “loneliness of the dying” (Elias, 1985),
which is particularly present in the urban, industrial context of Turin.
The process of self representation enacted in the cemetery goes beyond an objective
trasposition of reality, it implies an active cultural construction of memory and it is a
matter of agency. The cemetery and the gravestone, in this perspective, are increasingly
the space to express the individuality of the deceased person in spite of the uniformity that
dominates it.
On the contrary, there is an important number of “forgotten” graves and niches, even
among those in which persons have been buried recently. These graves do not represent
for mourners a place in which to locate the memories or a meaningful space in any sense.
A few interviews with persons who do not visit their relatives at the cemetery have shown
that the idea of visiting the cemetery as a “social duty” is, however, present. In fact, all
the interviewed people felt the need to provide an explanation for not visiting the grave.
In most cases these explanations were focused on practical motivations (the distance of
the cemetery, for example, or the difficulty in finding the time to visit the grave); but, in
one case, a 30 years old man described his decision to abandon the niche of his father as a
conscious refusal of the idea of the cemetery as a space for remembering the dead. It
seems that, at least in part, new generations find it more difficult to identify with the
traditional model of ritualizing death and do not take for granted that the cemetery is the
only meaningful locus for memories.

26
 There are, thus, two dinamics that go in apparently opposed directions: a trend
towards personalization of the graves and niches, wich implies a close attention to the
cemetery as a social space; and a progressive abbandonment of the importance of the
traditional place of the dead, along with a dislocation of the “cult of the dead” from the
cemetery. Both dinamics, however, are part of a wider process of weakening of collective
ritual narratives and attitudes towards death, which leaves room for new, personalized
expressions of memory that can be located at the cemetery or completely away from it. It
is still unclear to which stent these different models of behaviour affect the process of
coping with the bereavment and in the organizazion of personal and collective memories.
As a final conclusion we can remember Vovelle’s remark, written in his 1999’s post-
faction of his classical study La mort et l’Occident: «In funerals», and in cemeteries, we
should add, «it is possible to perceive clearly the uncertan equilibrium between the old
and the new; the disintegration of traditional gestures and the building of new gestures,
that we do not yet have the courage to define as new rites» (Vovelle, 2000, p. 725).

27
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