Reproductions of gravestone rubbings from grave sites in New England.

The use of engraved sculptural or painted images was a pagan practice, hesitantly adopted by the earliest Christians, who had to transform the old mythological symbols in order to express suitably the meanings of their new religion.

Evocative photographs and essay illuminate early American gravestones Gravestones are colonial America's earliest sculpture and they provide a unique physical link to the European people who settled here. Carved in Stone book is an elegant collection of over eighty fine duotone photographs, each a personal meditation on an old stone carving, and on New England's past, where these stones tell stories about death at sea, epidemics such as small pox, the loss of children, and a grim view of the afterlife. The essay is a graceful narrative that explores a long personal involvement with the stones and their placement in New England landscape, and attempts to trace the curious and imperfectly documented story of carvers. Brief quotes from early New England writers accompany the images, and captions provide basic information about each stone. These meditative portraits present an intimate view of figures from New England graveyards and will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Americana and fine art photography.

The graveyards of old New England hold an incredible range of poetic messages in the epitaphs etched into the gravestones, each a profound expression of emotion, culture, religion, and literature. These epitaphs are old, but their themes are timeless: mourning and faith, grief and hope, loss, and memory. This book tells the story of a years-long walk among gravestones and shares insights gained along the way. It identifies the source texts and authors chosen for these stones; interprets something of the tastes and beliefs of the people who did the choosing; offers some hypotheses on the various ways these texts were accessible to readers in remote towns and villages; gives a brief summary of the religious context of the times; and reflects on how the language and literature chosen for these epitaphs express these peoples' conflicted and evolving attitudes towards life, death, and eternity.