The work of collating this bibliography began in the early 1990s and has been ordered through use of a dynamic taxonomy that has expanded in all directions. Cemetery studies provokes vibrant and intriguing debate across social sciences, humanities and – increasingly – the sciences too.
The bibliography covers all aspects of disposing the dead and includes scholarship from around the world and in various languages. All entries are currently available via search in standard scholarly archives or on the web more generally.
Author names have been simplified to a single initial, but entries are otherwise complete.
On the theme of cemetery studies specifically, progress is indicated by two articles written in 1998 and 2022:
Rugg, J. (1998) ‘“A few remarks on modern sepulture”: current trends and new directions in cemetery research’, Mortality, 3:2, 111-28.
Rugg, J. (2022) ‘Further remarks on modern sepulture: twenty years of cemetery studies and eight core questions defining cemetery research’, Eastern and Northern European Journal of Death Studies, 16-46.
This last article is available to download.
The task of collation is ongoing, and the bibliography will be refreshed annually. The last update took place in February 2024.