Gathering Places for America's Dead: How Many, Where, and Why?

Recent availability of a place-specific roster of 99,625 named cemeteries appearing on USGS quadrangles renders possible for the first time the study of such places at more than the state or localized scale. County-level plotting of named sites for the eastern United States yields two unexpected results: a band of exceptionally high densities of named cemeteries traversing much of the Upper South and a parallel tract of low densities dominating the South Atlantic States. Region-specific cultural processes could apply since population density, physical geography, longevity of settlement, social diversity, and land costs, factors operating moderately well elsewhere, work poorly here to explain the pattern, as does diffusion.

Key Words:

• cemeteries
• GNIS
• necrogeography
• place names