Grave

<p>Object Lessons is a series of short beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. <p/><i>Grave </i>takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide Allison C. Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her the grave has largely been invisible an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However graves turn out to be not always so subtle reverent or permanent. <p/>While the indigent and unidentified have frequently been interred in mass graves a fate brought into the public eye during the COVID-19 pandemic the practice today is not unlike burials in the potter's fields of the colonial era. Burial is not the only option of course and Meier analyzes the rise of cremation green burial and new practices like human composting investigating what is next for the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life. <p/>Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in <i>The Atlantic.</i></p>