The cultural landscape of the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, Sacramento, California, 1849-1910, utilizing the methodologies of historical archaeology

The Sacramento Historic City Cemetery was founded in 1849 on the outskirts of Sacramento, California. It is an example of a nineteenth-century rural cemetery containing information on the population of Sacramento. The study covers the period from 1849 to 1910. This thesis draws on the methodology of historical archaeology and landscape theory to interpret the cultural landscape of the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery. This study utilizes typological classification, statistical tests, and spatial analysis using geographic information systems to examine how the cemetery landscape and material culture have changed through time. The cemetery location and layout are linked to the nineteenth-century miasmic theory of disease, and urbanization, and population growth. The grave markers in this cemetery reflect a trend toward the elaboration of funerary monuments in the Victorian Period toward an increasing standardization in the twentieth century. Statistical and spatial analysis suggests the cemetery landscape was most influenced by changes in cemetery land use through time, population growth, and disease.