Gravesites and websites: a comparison of memorialisation

Abstract

For centuries, gravesites have been utilised for memorialisation, and in recent time, websites are also used as memorials, and in this article, we compare these two different groups of artefacts. Through a careful consideration of the form, composition and content of physical and online memorial sites for the dead, we suggest contrasting modes of relations across these two groups in terms of collectives, time and space and the relationships with the deceased themselves. On the one hand, the gravesite memorial uses its carved stone, inscriptions and position in place to imply a mode of relations that is modern, structured, objectified, formal and intransient: the dead remain spatially sequest..