Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture

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Distributor for UNT Press books. A fifteen-year-old high school cheerleader is killed while driving on a dangerous curve one afternoon. By that night, her classmates have erected a roadside cross decorated with silk flowers, not as a grim warning, but as a loving memorial. In this study of roadside crosses, the first of its kind, Holly Everett presents the history of these unique commemoratives and their relationship to contemporary memorial culture.

The meaning of these markers is presented in the words of grieving parents, high school students, public officials, and private individuals whom the author interviewed during her fieldwork in Texas.

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Everett documents over thirty-five memorial sites with twenty-five photographs representing the wide range of creativity. Examining the complex interplay of politics, culture, and belief, she emphasizes the importance of religious expression in everyday life and analyzes responses to death that this tradition. Roadside crosses are a meeting place for communication, remembrance, and reflection, embodying on-going relationships between the living and the dead. They are a bridge between personal and communal pain—and one of the oldest forms of memorial culture.

It will be of interest to anyone who cares about ritual, identity, and material culture. Thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated, the book will attract both casual readers and serious scholars. A widespread practice of remembrance Roadside death-markers have been around for a long time and have a variety of forms.

These include free-standing crosses, crosses carved into roadside banks or trees, crosses painted on trees or banks, and stone heaps marking the place of death, resting-places for funerals or occasionally the site of burial. In England a variety of cross memorials have been erected from the late thirteenth Top left: A seventeenth-century wayside cross at Aghnaskeagh, Co.

Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture

Archaeological inventory of County Cavan Top right: Central shaft of wayside cross at Knockarigg Demesne, Co. Archaeological inventory of County Wicklow Far left: Memorial to Tom Dunphy near Drumsna, Co. Wooden cross with metal plaque erected to the memory of Deborah Farrell. Metal cross erected to the memory of Olive Boland near Enfield.

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This dual purpose—warning ster Abbey in London. In Mexico and parts may feature an inscription with the name and remembrance—was also given as the of the United States contemporary roadside of the deceased and date of death. The reason for erecting contemporary memorials by memorials have been linked to the central shaft of a wayside cross docu- bereaved family members in a recent American Descansos tradition.

Descansos were either mented in the County Wicklow archaeo- study. Memorials have also reminder to passers-by of their own common on Irish roads. A website created by been documented in many other countries, mortality by urging prayers for the Jerry Cremins—www.

Roadside Crosses In Contemporary Memorial Culture

Roadside Roadside memorials in Ireland In Ireland there are also a variety of road- side memorials or death-markers. Many of the county archaeological inventories document wayside crosses and cairns.

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It has Right, middle and far right: The memorial in been suggested that one purpose of these remembrance of Tommy Cushen and his cairns was to mark the resting-places neces- son Thomas is located near Moyvalley, and sary when coffins were carried to the grave- a memorial erected in memory of Maria yard. According to some correspondents to Frances Cairns at Ballynadrummy, Co. Earliest contemporary roadside memorial on the N4.

Erected to the memory of Nellie Murphy, who died in Stone cross with image on central shaft. Similarly if an accident occurs common.

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Marking the place of death in this sarily a new phenomenon; instead they near a forge the smith makes an iron cross ways reflects its continued importance. The folklore record documents wooden We visited this site one month after her 55th There are examples of simple stone crosses, and metal crosses, in addition to some anniversary to find recently placed flowers, reminiscent of earlier wayside crosses, such as cairns.

In the past the choosing of material poignantly demonstrating the memorial as that erected in for Richard Bohan near was dictated by available skills in the an enduring site of remembrance. Many of Dromad, Co.

Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture | University of North Texas Press

This cross also features locality. According to one correspondent to the memorials also display evidence of an a hand-carved face on the central shaft. Memorial to Patrick Gill, Drumsna, Co.