Coffin hardware analysis and chronology of the Head Cemetery, Robertson County, Texas

Atkins performed an archaeological relocation of a nineteenth century cemetery on behalf of Luminant Mining Company, within the Kosse Mine in Robertson County, Texas between the years of 2011 and 2012. The Head Cemetery offers unique opportunities to examine views of death and burial in rural, central Texas during the period of the early statehood until around 1900. The Head family and other members of the settlement were part of a pioneer community exhibiting clear expressions of family and community affiliations through spatiality and the material culture of burials. An analysis of coffin hardware and burial practices provides suggestions for dating and identifying unknown interments and exploring changing sentiments towards death by Anglo American settlers within the broader sociohistorical context of the nineteenth century.