Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Bodily Memory In Digital Space: Personalized Bioarchaeological Research And Musculoskeletal Modeling At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Jessica L. Skinner

Theses and Dissertations

A well-contextualized account of personal experience and identity is essential to any study of social dynamics and is crucial to the enactment of critical and socially active bioarchaeology. New technology, including digital bioarchaeology, can enhance the growing body of work that examines embodiment, agency, and identity, particularly when used with a holistic and ethical approach. This dissertation utilizes three-dimensional (3D) scanning, a method that creates digital representations of human skeletal remains, to bolster identifications of individuals once interred at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) whose identities were erased by construction in the 1900s. Embodied life experience is also …

“Penniless And Unknown”: Temporality Of The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery - A Gis Analysis, Eric Eugene Burant

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses GIS modeling techniques of spatial data, archaeological data, and historical documentation to determine patterning of material culture associated with interments at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC), an unmarked cemetery located in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Archaeological excavations at the MCPFC in 1991-1992 and again in 2013 recovered over 2,400 individuals associated with Milwaukee County’s practice of providing burial for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals sent from the Coroner’s Office, the remains of cadaverized individuals, and community poor from 1862 through 1925 (Richards 2016).

Previous research identified two distinct material culture classes; grave goods and grave inclusions. …

Death In Anonymity: Population Dynamics And The Individual Within The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, 1882–1925, Brooke L. Drew

Theses and Dissertations

Prior to hospital construction in late 1991 and early 1992, and again in 2013, archaeologists were called upon to excavate 1,649 and 831 burials, respectively, from the unmarked Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. The individuals disinterred during these field seasons represent what remains of a much larger indigent population buried by Milwaukee County between 1882 and 1925 in what has been designated as Cemetery II. Long before the expanding facilities at Wauwatosa’s Milwaukee Regional Medical Center threatened these graves, however, the very nature of pauper burial grounds caused the identities of these disenfranchised individuals to be systematically obliterated.

The research …

A Public Humanity: The Application Of Isotopic Analysis To The Intersection Between Body And Law At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Shannon Kate Freire

Theses and Dissertations

The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery is an umbrella term used to describe the four cemeteries that were used by Milwaukee County from 1878 through 1974 for the burial of the indigent, unclaimed, institutionalized, and anatomized. Three of these cemeteries remain undisturbed. The primary focus of this research is the twice-excavated Cemetery II (Wisconsin Burial Site 47BMI0076), in use between 1882 and 1925. Archaeological excavations in 1991-1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from this cemetery location.

In Wisconsin, legislative efforts to govern indigent burial and dissection mediated competing aspirations between medical education and …

Incorporating The Skeletal Remains Of Two German Lutheran Cemeteries Into The Surrounding Immigrant Population Of Mequon, Wisconsin, Jacquelyn I. Bluma

Theses and Dissertations

The skeletal remains of 24 individuals were disinterred from the Altenburg Lutheran Church Society Cemetery and the German Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery (Stolz Site) in 1987 and 1989, respectively. Both unmarked cemeteries were located in Mequon, Wisconsin. The majority of these individuals were interred during the mid-nineteenth century, a time when German populations were becoming established as a major cultural and ethnic force within the region. Although these cemeteries have undergone multiple analyses, they have not been incorporated into larger discussions of settlement and mortuary practices in the area. By characterizing German immigrant settlement and mortuary practices, it is possible to …