What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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she says. "That has meant making numerous trips across the state, researching the stories behind some of our oddest markers. Most of the book is written, but I left the most difficult chapters for last." Among the things Burnett discovered along the way were the cemeteries near the Buffalo River, which will be her topic for a Shiloh Museum Sandwiched In lecture April 21. Her talk is based, she says, on an actual tour that she's led for the Buffalo National River Partners, but with the addition of cemeteries that are hard to reach. "These isolated burying grounds are good places to find examples of lost customs, such as marking burials with grave covers," she says. "The designs, brought to the Ozarks by white settlers from their states of origin — primarily Tennessee — include such things as grave houses, stone tents (called combs), stone boxes and coffin shapes (called false crypts), stacked-stone cairns and graves that are kept covered in freshly scraped and mounded dirt, so they always appear recent. "These constructions were complicated to make, and over time they tend to fall down or be taken apart. Such grave covers were once found across the Ozarks, but today it is hard to find intact examples — yet Buffalo River cemeteries contain quite a few if you know where to look. "Once it's safe to travel again, I'd like to head back to South Arkansas and explore more cemeteries there," she says of what's next. "I've always known I loved the Ozarks but had never traveled very far beyond these mountains, and I fell in love with Arkansas as I explored. I discovered how interesting this state is, and how many wonderfully quirky stories it contains! "Oh, [and] one of your questions had to do with not writing about food any longer," she adds. "I know the two subjects sound mutually exclusive, but I'm working on a talk, 'Food and Death,' that will be about all the ways food is found on tombstones. I guess I haven't entirely left that subject behind!" 38 WHAT'S UP! APRIL 18-24, 2021 Cemeteries Continued From Page 10 SPRINGDALE PRESIDENT Brent A. Powers EDITOR Becca Martin-Brown 479-872-5054 bmartin@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAbecca ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jocelyn Murphy 479-872-5176 jmurphy@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAJocelyn REPORTER Lara Hightower 479-365-2913 lhightower@nwadg.com DESIGNER Deb Harvell ! UP WHAT'S ON THE COVER Ten of the postponed 2020 concerts at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers were rescheduled for dates this summer, and one show has a performance date in 2022. The AMP announced two new shows April 15 and 16, with more to come. (COURTESY PHOTO) What's Up! is a publication of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Unique ways of marking graves came to Arkansas with settlers from back East, including "grave houses, stone tents (called combs), stone boxes and coffin shapes (called false crypts), stacked-stone cairns and graves that are kept covered in freshly scraped and mounded dirt, so they always appear recent," says author Abby Burnett. She has a longstanding quest for lambs on tombstones and found these (photo at left) in a cemetery near the Buffalo River. (Courtesy Photos/Abby Burnett)