The Arts of Inclusion and Exclusion: Funerary Art Taken from the Example of the Municipal Cemetery Tongerseweg Maastricht

Abstract

The chapter analyzes the world-making and group-defining function of the vernacular funerary arts, at the example of Tongerseweg Cemetery, in Maastricht, the Netherlands, since its inception in 1812. Despite the differentiation of groups from various backgrounds by means of spatial separators, the funerary arts have also helped to transcend differences and to indicate similarities, thus helping to maintain a sense of belonging to a single civic community. The chapter signals the retreat of such abstract, overly political referends since the 1980s and attributes this to a shift in economic, political and cultural understandings that occurred in the 1970s.