A CEMETRY. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL READING OF SPACE AND MEMORY ON THE EXAMPLE OF A VILLAGE CEMETERY AT ZŁOTY POTOK

Abstract

From the cultural point of view, the space of a cemetery is an unfinished artefact; it undergoes constant transformations both as a  material and as a non-material construct. It functions as a palimpsest whose space is created and adjusted by the passage of time; it is time that imposes new meanings and identities upon it. To read a cemetery correctly, one needs to be familiar with the language in which it has been written and to subject it to several readings, since the first reading, i.e. that of a cemetery’s “clearly visible, evident and intentionally exposed” (as J. Kolbuszewski put it) objects and signs, does not allow the scholar to profoundly reconstruct its space. My example will be a village cemetery located in the Cracow-Częstochowa Jura region (in the village of Złoty Potok, Janów commune, Częstochowa county).