Cherubs Or Putti? Gravemarkers Demonstrating Conspicuous Consumption and the Rococo Fashion in the Eighteenth Century
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Int J Histor Archaeol (2014) 18:37–64 DOI 10.1007/s10761-013-0246-x Cherubs or Putti? Gravemarkers Demonstrating Conspicuous Consumption and the Rococo Fashion in the Eighteenth Century Adam R. Heinrich Published online: 6 December 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract Since the 1960s, James Deetz and other archaeologists have attributed the appearance of the cherub icon on colonial-period gravemarkers to religious movements such as the Great Awakening or diminished Puritan influence during the eighteenth century. The cherub has been interpreted by many scholars as a symbol of a heavenly being that reflects freer perceptions on life and the afterlife. This article challenges the long-held religious connotations of the cherub icon. Instead, this article demonstrates that the icon relates to the wider Rococo artistic trend that was the prime influence on the forms and decorations of contemporary material culture. In this artistic fashion, the cherub is a putto, a Classical allegorical element that remained common in architectural and mortuary sculpture. The use of the putto comes with a number of additional contemporary elements and shows that consumer choice connected to the latest fashion instead of changing religious attitudes being the driver behind iconographic and decoration change on colonial gravemarkers. Keywords Gravemarkers . Rococo . Conspicuous consumption . Fashion Introduction By the mid-seventeenth century, New England folk artisans were producing gravemarkers that were derived from earlier European mortuary traditions. This phe- nomenon later influenced distinctive local traditions north to Nova Scotia (Irwin 2007), Maine (Giguere 2005) and New Hampshire (Rainville 1999), and south through Rhode Island (Luti 2002), Connecticut (Ludwig 1966;Slater1987), the Hudson River Valley (Welch 1983, 1987), and northern New Jersey (Veit 1991, 1996, 2009; Zielenski 2004). Monmouth County, New Jersey, is recognized as the most southern contiguous area A. R. Heinrich (*) Department of History and Anthropology, Monmouth University, 400 Cedar Lane, West Long Branch, NJ 07764, USA e-mail: [email protected] 38 Int J Histor Archaeol (2014) 18:37–64 where the tradition can be found on a large scale (Heinrich 2003, 2011;McLeod1979; Veit 2000, p. 127), though a number of icon-adorned gravemarkers made by New Jersey and New England carvers were exported as far south as the Carolinas, Georgia, and the Caribbean (Gorman and DiBlasi 1981; Little 1998;MouldandLoewe2006, pp. 208–209; Paonessa 1990). These icon-adorned gravemarkers have been valuable resources for scholars study- ing the social values of colonial and Federal period North Americans. Due to the common association of death with religion and concepts of an afterlife, the decorations, especially the imagery or iconography in the tympanums of these early gravemarkers, have generally been married to religious interpretations. As such, scholars have associated evolutions of the imagery found on the markers with religious movements. Gravemarkers are also robust, enduring, and public displays of status and purchasing power. The influential interpretations on the appearances and changes of gravemarker iconography connected to religious movements have been foundation research for wide numbers of introductory and historical archaeology studies on seriation and cultural change. This article challenges the long-held religious connotations of the cherub icon and its contemporaneous decorations, and it presents an alternative historically and economically-grounded explanation where the changes in the gravemarkers’ iconogra- phies in addition to secondary imagery reflect the fashions observed on contemporary material culture and therefore they reflect the consumer and not the religious ideology of those who purchased the stones. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate geographic locales where significant gravemarker studies were performed and are referred to in this article. Religious Associations of Gravemarker Iconography In the New World context, the earliest dated gravemarkers and the first systematic studies of their iconography are from New England; hence, the historic and regional influence of the Puritans has been used to explain the preponderance of mortality symbols on the earliest markers. These earliest mortality symbols in the forms of winged death’s heads, hourglasses, skulls, and crossbones have been attributed to the stereotypic and probably overdrawn perceptions of the Puritans as individuals who emphasized the impermanence of the mortal body and their uncertainty about their fates after death (Deetz and Dethlefsen 1967, p. 30; Dethlefsen and Deetz 1966,p.506; Ludwig 1966, pp. 4, 21–51). The later changes in colonial gravemarker iconography were also connected to religious movements. In the mid-eighteenth century, the winged cherubs (also called soul effigies or human faces with wings) appear and generally replace mortality symbols in popularity. Due to the loose contemporaneity with the Great Awakening, archaeologists Edwin Dethlefsen and James Deetz (1966, pp. 504–508) argued that the perceived freer, more enthusiastic religious movement caused a departure from the morbid mortality images to the more hopeful cherubs where the immortal part of the person was emphasized rather than the mortality of man. Similarly, Deetz and Dethlefsen connected the change from cherubs to Neoclassical symbols such as the willow tree and urn, which memorializing the memory of the individual at the end of the eighteenth century, to increasing secularization due to the presence of additional religions such as Unitarianism and Methodism. Art historian Allan Ludwig (1966,pp. Int J Histor Archaeol (2014) 18:37–64 39 42–52) attributed the appearance of the cherub to the diminished authority of the Puritans in New England. Building off these early Massachusetts studies, numerous other researchers attempted to seriate colonial gravemarkers using their iconography. These studies cover much of the East Coast and range from Nova Scotia and New Hampshire to as far south as Georgia and they have connected changes and icon meanings to the religious movements argued in the early New England publications, often in attempts to replicate or identify deviations from the patterns described by Dethlefsen and Deetz (Benes 1977; Gorman and DiBlasi 1977, p. 111, 1981,pp.89–90, 94; Irwin 2007,pp.57–63; McLeod 1979,pp.49–75; Rainville 1999, pp. 557–560; Stone 2009, pp. 153–154; Tashjian and Tashjian 1974). Other scholars have critiqued the theoretical underpinnings of Ludwig’s as well as Deetz and Dethlefsen’s works. Religious historian David Hall (1977) critically rejected the religious connections to gravestone iconography arguing that the religious groups were not uniformly monolithic and there are too many variables unanswered by religious explanations. As archaeological researchers tested the New England work, several were not convinced that iconographic change was related to religious trends and instead suggest that the icons and their change reflected unknown cultural processes (Baugher and Winter 1983, p. 53; Heinrich 2011, p. 10; Levine 1978,p.53;Veit2009, p. 117). Fig. 1 Map illustrating locales for gravemarker studies and images mentioned in this article (drawn by author, 2013) 40 Int J Histor Archaeol (2014) 18:37–64 Fig. 2 Map illustrating the numerous locales surveyed and photographed in New Jersey (outline by Rutgers University Cartography) Over the last 50 years, a body of literature has accumulated showing that there are no religious boundaries with the main colonial-period gravestone symbols. Throughout the colonies where the carving tradition appears, death’s heads and the other mortality symbols dominate the earliest stones found in Presbyterian, Anglican, Dutch Reformed, Baptist, and common burial grounds. Indeed, there is even one in the Quaker burial ground in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. Cherubs are also found in the burial grounds of all the earliest religions (Baugher and Winter 1983,p.53;Heinrich2011, pp. 7, 10, 16; Stone 2009, pp. 153–154; Veit 1991, pp. 125–129, 2009, pp. 128–139), including Quakers (Brennan 2011, p. 107), a few examples from the colonial Jewish Burying Ground in Newport, Rhode Island (Gradwohl 2007, pp. 35–40), and even Catholic burial grounds in Ireland (Mytum 2003) and Scotland (Willsher and Hunter 1978). A variety of additional central icons also appear across the northeastern colonies. Specific to New Jersey and New York in the mid-eighteenth century, stylized tulips and sunbursts/scallops appear, and while they are also not religion specific, the tulips show correlations with young, generally unmarried, women and the sunbursts/scallops with children, though these correlations are not exclusive (Veit 1991,p.63,2009, p. 123). At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, monograms that now prominently placed the deceased’s initials in the tympanum served as memorializing equivalents for the willows and urns of New England (Veit 1991, pp. 67–69, 2009,p.117). The icon-adorned markers in the Quaker and Jewish burial grounds are puzzling if they are considered in religious contexts because each religion supposedly eschewed “graven images” based on strict interpretations of the Old Testament (Gradwohl 2007, p. 38; Stone 1991, p. 9). The cross-religious use of the icons, including those found in the Quaker and Jewish burial grounds, is likely due to a civic attitude toward Int J Histor Archaeol (2014) 18:37–64 41 commemorating the