Date and Time: Monday, November 12, 2018; 7:00 p.m.

Place: Macktown Living History Education Center, Rockton, IL

Presentation: When Shall We Be Forgotten?
Social Death and the Politics of Memory in North Chicagoland Cemeteries

Dr. Scott Palumbo
Dept. of Anthropology, College of Lake County

Summary:
The archaeological identification of social identity has remained an important goal of mortuary archaeology since its inception. This presentation applies the notion of personhood, or the social and collective aspects of identity, as a means to interpret social changes evident in the cemeteries of the north Chicagoland area. This paper summarizes part of an ongoing historical archaeology project that seeks to document the spatial organization of cemeteries and aboveground grave markers over the past 150 years. This information is used to infer broad changes in our American views of death, expressions of class and ethnicity, and the politics associated with remembrance and forgetting.

About the presenter:
Scott grew up in Connecticut and entered graduate school in anthropology at the University of Florida to specialize in Central Andean archaeology. He went on to specialize in Central American archaeology and received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009. He is currently a professor of anthropology at the College of Lake County.