FAIRMONT — On Sunday, March 26 at 2 p.m. the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center will present a lecture titled “Gravestones, Cemetery Plants, and the Upper Mon Valley Deathscape” by Dr. Travis Stimeling and Mary Linscheid.

The West Virginia University professors will present some of their recent research into the botanical life of cemeteries and graveyards in the upper Monongahela Valley. Linscheid and Stimeling have documented hundreds of graves in the watershed and explored the connections between burial plantings and folk medicinal practices of Indigenous peoples in the region, as well as the European settler-colonists buried in these spaces.

Linscheid and Stimeling also consider the broader implications of deathscapes that can overmark the graves of settler-colonists and their descendants while leaving the burials of Indigenous people and other people of color in the region unmarked. This work was supported in part by West Virginia University’s Research Apprenticeship program. 

The lecture is free for all to attend.

For more information on this and other Folklife Center programming, please call the Folklife Center at 304-367-4286 or email WVFolklife@FairmontState.edu. The Folklife Center is located on Squibb Wilson Boulevard in Fairmont on the campus of Fairmont State University.