Date of Award
Spring 4-23-2025
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department/Major
Anthropology
First Advisor
Dr. Saige Kelmelis
Second Advisor
Dr. Anthony Krus
Third Advisor
Dr. Crystal Sheedy
Keywords
demography, cemetery, gravestone motifs, epidemiology, Bluff View Cemetery, Vermillion, history of Vermillion, cemetery demography, mortality, survivability
Subject Categories
Other Anthropology
Abstract
Cemeteries offer accessible, rich data for research on demographic reconstruction of past populations. Gravestones can give vital information such as date of birth, date of death, sex/gender, occupation, religious affiliation, and, implicitly, social and cultural values of the community at large (Dethlefsen and Deetz, 1966; Sattenspiel and Stoops, 2010). One of the drawbacks of cemetery data are that they more often than not do not provide details of the cause of death for an individual or in some rare occasions cause of death is on the gravestones (e.g., colonial graves during the tuberculosis outbreak in New England would often list that the individual died of “consumption”) (Bell, 2006).
For this study, date of birth, date of death, age, sex/gender, and gravestone motif data were collected from the Bluff View Cemetery in Vermillion, South Dakota to explore shifts in population dynamics from its initial settlement during the post-Civil War period to the modern day as the region experienced significant demographic and epidemiological transitions. With these data, the demography of past Vermillion citizens was studied to determine demographic shifts in this rural community from data tracking mortality and fertility events from the mid-19th century (c. 1859 AD) to the modern period (December 31, 2023). Furthermore, patterns in mortality data were compared by assigned sex/gender based on naming convention since female and male mortality may have differed over time due to shifting sex/gender-based mortality pressures, such as wartime conscription and maternal deaths. The findings of this thesis research were contextualized within broader anthropological theories about demographic and epidemiological transitions in the Western world.
Recommended Citation
Schwartz, Ellie E., "Demography of Bluff View Cemetery Vermillion, SD" (2025). Honors Thesis. 357.
https://red.library.usd.edu/honors-thesis/357