Page 2 - cemetery_tour_curriculum guide

Note To Teachers

Let’s face it…people do not like cemeteries. When you visit a cemetery you come into
contact with your own mortality. However, a cemetery is a valuable historical teaching
tool. You can guide students into many discussions that not only cover historical
themes, but art, music, or literature can also be discussed. This is why I offer the
opportunity to guide your students through our city’s cemeteries; they are warehouses
of first-hand knowledge about our community.

This curriculum guide will give you an understanding of how cemeteries developed and
some of the famous local people buried in either Riverview or City Cemetery here in
South Bend.

Some of this information is just used to educate the teacher, so they can effectively lead
their students in ‘graveyard’ discussions and discovery. Some of the material I would
photocopy for your student when they visit the cemetery.

Some Rules:
1. Do not lean, sit, or climb on any grave marker or stone.
2. Do not touch any flowers or other mementos you may find on graves or gravestones.
3. Do not approach any funeral that may be in progress while you’re in the

cemetery…please be respectful and keep noise to a minimum if you are within
earshot of the burial ceremony.
4. Do not run while you are in the cemetery
5. Feel free to ask questions at any time.
6. Stay together and do not go off on your own.
7. Take your trash with you or deposit it in a trashcan within the cemetery.

A Brief History of Cemeteries

In the speculation about the evidence from Swartkrans, South Africa and Chou Kou
Tien, China is true, the earliest known concentrations of hominid remains were the
garbage heaps of predators: in the first case, a leopard, and, in the second, cannibals.
Between 20,000 and 75,000 years ago, Neanderthals began to bury their dead. The
first burials may have been unintentional. Compatriots who sealed them in caves to
protect them from wild animals left behind hunters who were wounded or ill. When they
recovered enough, they were supposed to push the stones away. Some didn’t get
better and became interesting archaeological finds with spears and other personal
effects.

Evidence of many of our contemporary customs appears at Neanderthal sites. At Iraq’s
Sharindar Cave, for example, flowers were left with a burial. Personal effects
accompany other burials. Neanderthals also began the practice of carefully orienting
the body on an East-West axis or so that the corpse faced east. (Orthodox Christian
cemeteries maintain this tradition.) The first cities may have been cities of the dead,
complexes of grave mounds whose walls were adapted to other purposes. We knew