ANTH 2463: The Science of Our Past
Daniel Family Cemetery
Lab Report Instructions
You will submit your lab report to Canvas (see Canvas Assignments for due date/time). Though you will work together as a group, each individual must turn in their own work in their own words. If you do not turn in your report prior to your scheduled lab time, your grade on this assignment will be penalized 10% per day (including weekend days).
Your report will have three sections, Introduction & Methods, Results, and Discussion & Conclusions. Use this rubric as a guide.
Introduction and Methods (10 Points)
The main purpose of an introduction is to contextualize for the reader what it is you intend to do and why. It is here that you set up your research problem. Do NOT copy and paste from the lab packet. That is plagiarism. Restate in your own words what you are going to do in your report and why. You should also explicitly state your research questions (the entire purpose of your lab report). Your methods section should be a simple description of what you did – visited the cemetery, how you collected the data (and what categories, e.g. name/s, date of birth/death, iconography (decorations) etc), inputting the data into the tables, and generating summary charts.
Results (20 points)
Summarize the patterns that you observed in your data – note the total number of graves and interred (buried) individuals, how many graves from the map you found (the FS sequence), how many new graves you identified not on the map (the SMU sequence). Use your charts to describe patterns in births and deaths by decade, and by gender. What trends in age at death do you identify?
Figures (5 points)
Includes at least one chart/graph. This is correctly labeled and referenced in your text.
Discussion & Conclusions (45 points)
Answer the research questions with reference to your observations in the cemetery, interpretations of the data, and information from the lab packet. Does the mortuary information from the Daniel Family Cemetery follow the historical pattern for American settlement in the Dallas region? Are there any indicators of connections to the eastern portions of the United States? Does the burial history of the Daniel family follow the general population trends for Dallas? What do mortality profiles of the cemetery population indicate about differences between men and women, or differences between people born during different time periods? Do all of the people buried in the cemetery appear to have been treated equally in death?
Formatting and Grammar (20 points)
Report must be 3-5 pages, Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1-inch margins, double spaced. Also include your name, lab section, and any group members in a header. Please label your “Introduction & Methods”, “Results” and “Discussion & Conclusions” sections with headers. Please spell check your report, avoid contractions (e.g., “can’t”, “won’t”, “isn’t”), avoid acronyms, and use complete sentences.
ANTH 2463: The Science of Our Past
Daniel Family Cemetery
Lab Guide
Part I: Visit the Daniel Family Cemetery with your TA and complete the following lab.
Part II: Read Hudson 1993 and Davidson 1999, and review the tables in Franklin & Wilson 2020 at home. Post a response (at minimum 150 words) to the Canvas discussion board and reply (at minimum 50 words) to at least two of your classmates’ responses.
One way that archaeologists learn about the demographic or population history of a settlement is through analysis of tombstones. Information on tombstones record birth and death dates, the biological sex of the interred, and sometimes marriage partners, children or other relations. We can use this information to explore broad demographic trends in population movement, health status, marriage patterns, birth rates, and mortality over time. For example, are there major differences in life expectancy between males and females that you can explain by occupational hazards or warfare? Are there diachronic changes in life expectancy that you might attribute to epidemics or to improved hospital access? Do aspects of the graves provide evidence for social inequality among the deceased population? Results of tombstone analyses may be summarized in demographic mortality profiles. A mortality profile (also called an Age at Death Profile) is created by calculating the frequency of different age or sex cohorts in a death assemblage. Higher numbers represent greater rates of death in these cohorts.
Styles and designs on tombstones also reflect death-related aesthetics and rituals associated with the dead. In some cases, this information can tell us about the ethnic origins of buried individuals. Most names, for example, can be traced through ethnic lineages. The iconography on tombstones may further reflect membership in religious, occupational, political, or other social collectives.
Biases also can exist in tombstone data. Wood markers, which may or may not correlate to socio-economic status, decay more rapidly than stone. Small markers are more likely to be lost, buried, or moved. Some graves may not be marked at all. Moreover, a cemetery contains a burial population, interred over some interval of time by one or more segments of a society (e.g., family, religious group, or neighborhood). The degree to which this burial population reflects the larger demographic trends of a society depends upon the nature of the sample. So is the sample representative of the society as a whole? Small cemeteries may be less representative of demographic trends than larger ones.
These are all issues that must be confronted when evaluating data based upon tombstone research. Still a great deal can be learned about a past population through the study of grave markers.
Instructions:
You will be asked to examine and document funerary information from one of the oldest cemeteries in Dallas County—The Daniel Family Cemetery. We graciously have permission from the family for this lab, but do NOT go to the cemetery outside of lab class times. You will be trespassing.
The Daniel Family Cemetery is located at the corner of Airline Road and Milton Avenue, just two blocks from the northern campus of Southern Methodist University. The cemetery is all that remains of a small family farm that was once located in the area. The remaining structures have since been demolished and only traces of them remain buried beneath the residences of the local area.
Goals:
Study the history of the Daniel family
Record demographic data that can be recovered from tombstones
Understand the information and iconography utilized on historical Texan tombstones
Explore the historical demography of Dallas
Background:
Dallas Texas was founded in 1841 as a small settlement along a ford across the Trinity River. This original settlement is now buried beneath central downtown Dallas. The frontier in the 1830s and 1840s was very unsettled and subject to raids by the Comanche, riding in from the Llano Estacado to the west. The infamous 1836 Fort Parker massacre took place only 100 miles to the south and east of Dallas and the 1844 Muncie massacre took place less than 40 miles to the north.
Following the foundation of Dallas, a series of small farms sprang up to the east and north of town. Settlement in the area generally occurred in three distinct episodes. The first followed the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845 and lasted until the beginning of the Civil War (1861-1865). Most settlers came from the southern states of US Eastern seaboard: Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. By the 1860s, many of the men had left Dallas to fight in the Civil War and the remaining settlers withdrew to the east to avoid Comanche raiders.
The second period of settlement occurred at the conclusion of the Civil War and the withdrawal of the Comanche to Oklahoma. This period dates from 1865 to 1900. Farming and ranching flourished throughout the region, especially as families moved back to the west of town following the Civil War. Recently freed African Americans also began to move into the area to establish Freedman’s towns. Major railways, connecting Dallas to San Diego and the Chicago stockyards, reached the city in 1871 and 1880. The railways precipitated a period of major economic growth, mostly in the realms of ranching, cotton, and manufactured goods.
In the 20th century, Dallas began its third period of explosive population growth, particularly after the discovery of oil in the region in 1930. By the 1950s, development in Dallas encompassed the area where the Daniel farm once stood, leaving only the cemetery. The population history of Dallas has, for the most part, been a record of steady and continuous growth. Major surges of population occurred from 1920 to 1940 and from 1945 to 1970.
The Daniel Family:
The Daniel Family farm was one of the first farms placed to the north of the newly founded town of Dallas. Francis Sims Daniel homesteaded this farm. After losing her husband she moved her family from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Texas in 1849. Her household consisted of herself, her children (some of whom were married with their own families) and enslaved people who were considered “family slaves.” The Daniel farm consisted of 640 acres north and west of the current SMU campus, including much of the north end of the campus, Highland Park, and all of Snider Plaza. Ms. Daniel paid 50 cents per acre for the land. Behind the farmhouse was a large fruit orchard. In 1850, Daniel family lore records the death of “Old Frank,” an enslaved man who had been with Francis Daniel since 1810. It is believed that he was buried in the orchard, thus initiating the Daniel Family Cemetery. Francis died in 1853, and family lore indicates that she also was buried near Old Frank.
The Daniel farm was used continuously until the early 20th century, when it was broken up among several branches of the family and sold. By the Great Depression, many members of the Daniel family had relocated to Dallas proper. Branches of the Daniel family owned several local businesses and remained fairly prosperous. One branch of the family, the Doggett’s, owned a successful grain elevator company that operated across North Texas in the 1930s and 1940s. The only daughter of the Doggett family, Margaret Doggett, married a young naval officer, Trammell Crow in 1942. Trammel Crow became a prominent North Texas real estate magnate and pioneered the purchase and construction of major urban architecture across the United States, from Dallas to Atlanta to San Francisco. In 1986, he was the largest single private landowner in the United States. In 2006, his company sold for 2.2 billion dollars.
The cemetery is all that remains of the original Daniel family farmstead. The family maintains this property jointly with regular maintenance and upkeep. They are kind enough to allow SMU’s Department of Anthropology to conduct educational exercises at this remarkable historic site. Please be respectful.
Research questions:
Does the mortuary information from the Daniel Family Cemetery follow the historical pattern for American settlement in the Dallas region? Are there any indicators of connections to the eastern portions of the United States? Does the burial history of the Daniel family follow the general population trends for Dallas? What do mortality profiles of the cemetery population indicate about differences between men and women, or differences between people born during different time periods? Do all of the people buried in the cemetery appear to have been treated equally in death?
Methodology:
To answer these questions, researchers must record mortuary information from standing tombstones. There are currently approximately 75 grave markers in the Daniel Cemetery, some of which mark the graves of more than one individual (there are at least 117 individuals interred on the property). You and your group will collect data from 25 of the headstones and then share the data with the class. From each marker, you will record feature number (FS, see map below), name of individual, year of birth (if listed), year of death (if listed), age, biological sex, description of gravestone decorations, and any inscriptions on the marker. Use the DATA SHEET below to record this information.
Please note that some grave markers contain more than one name, and that clear dates are not present on all markers.
The Daniel family has provided a map to aid in this demographic study. However, the map is several years old and out of date. Therefore, it is not completely accurate. It does not include all the tombstones at the cemetery, nor do all the tombstones on the map actually exist in the cemetery today. In addition to recording each tombstone in the chart, you will need to edit the Daniel Family map to indicate new graves or document which are no longer visible. Specifically, tombstones that do not appear on the map must be drawn in and given a new number. Tombstones on the map that are not present on the ground should be neatly crossed-through. If a tombstone can be matched to a marker on the map with an FS (field specimen) number, use that number. If the tombstone does not possess an FS number, assign it a SMU-number. The SMU-numbers should be sequential: SMU-1, SMU-2, etc. Tombstone entries must have one or the other of the identifying numbers (FS or SMU). They cannot contain both.
The post “Exploring Demographic Trends in the Daniel Family Cemetery: A Lab Report on Mortuary Analysis in ANTH 2463” “Exploring History and Demography through Tombstone Analysis: The Daniel Family Cemetery in Dallas, Texas” “Exploring the Mortuary History of the Daniel Family Cemetery in Dallas, Texas: A Study of American Settlement and Population Trends” Demographic Study of Grave Markers in the Daniel Family Cemetery appeared first on academic aid express.
