I was doing some "house cleaning" of overstuffed file folders on my computer, and came across more photos of the Puritan cemetery that I featured in Puritans. These I took on a bright fall day in 2018, in striking contrast to the earlier ones, taken under dark, rainy conditions the year before.
Once again, we see the deathshead with "hole eyes" and barred teeth on stones from the early part of the18th Century, replaced by more naturalistic heads later in the century. This reflects a change in attitudes toward death, from concern about the fate of the soul of the departed to glorification of the soul, and sympathy for the mourners left behind. The full story can be found here.