Keeping the Devil at Bay: The Shoe on the Coffin Lid and Other Grave Charms in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century America

Abstract

Nineteenth-and early twentieth-century graves excavated archaeologically in the United States are occasionally found in association with objects beyond the typical clothing or coffin hardware, such as ceramic vessels, coins, and perhaps most mysterious of all, a single shoe placed on the lid of the coffin or casket. Not clearly described in archival accounts, the single shoe phenomenon within a mortuary context is argued here to be a creolized practice, combining an African cosmology and belief in the liminal state of the soul after death with a European and especially British Isles tradition of shoes as magical objects and potential traps for evil.

Taphonomic Patterning of Cemetery Remains Received at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Boston, Massachusetts

“…Artifacts indicative of the burial environment are often useful in determining the origin of cemetery remains to confirm direct taphonomic changes to the remains . Even when the wooden portions of a coffin have completely decomposed, the remnant metal coffin hardware may persist and indicate the timeframe of the associated remains . Hacker‐Norton and Trinkley , in their study of early coffin hardware in the United States, list seven major categories of metal coffin hardware commonly mass‐produced by multiple manufacturers.…”

Origins of an Unmarked Georgia Cemetery Using Ancient DNA Analysis

“…The burial of boots on top of one coffin related to African-American traditions where footwear served as a means of protecting the dead from malevolent spirits (Davidson 2010). Personal items including combs, dolls, tobacco pipes, purses, jewelry, and wedding bands, were placed with the dead to prevent the spirit from returning to their former homes, searching for things they needed in the next world (Fenn 1985;Matternes et al 2010;Roedinger 1981;Thompson and Cornett 1981;Vlach 1991).…”