| Description |
The Napoleonic burial reforms of 1804 instituted a modern system of burial throughout the French Empire that, radically for the time, promised access to individual burial plots for all regardless of socioeconomic status or religion. Burial duration, however, was highly regulated and limited as one was only guaranteed a plot for five years unless they had the means to pay for more time. Consequently, the cemeteries of France became and continue to be sites defined by high turnover rates that disproportionately preserve the most elite and "culturally significant" graves. Therefore, present-day perceptions of places such as the famed Père-Lachaise Cemetery are heavily influenced by survival biases that misleadingly portray these sites-especially to audiences unfamiliar with concepts of temporary burial-as having always been exclusive, monumental, and privileged spaces of burial. Based on the author's doctoral research and 2024 monograph, this case study describes the process of translating archival records into analyzable datasets for historical and art historical research, especially in cases where other forms of material evidence have been prone to systematic political or cultural erasure over time. Working at the intersection of cultural economics, history, and visual studies, this case study offers a digital humanities approach that is data intensive and considers issues of missing and incomplete data and information loss alongside aggregate analyses of cultural heritage as a means of working through survival biases. |
