Often a centrally located entrance leads to symmetrical paths or roadways that divide the cemetery into sections. Planting may mark sections, plots or individual graves. Such features set off the individual graves as well as the entire cemetery, both physically and visually, from the surrounding area. Nineteenth century cemeteries distinctly differ from earlier American graveyards. The differences are not limited to changes in gravestone styles, epitaphs, and symbols.
Earlier graveyards express mortuary ideology and attitudes of death through individual graves.
Nineteenth century institutionalization of rural cemeteries suggests that variation in individual graves is subsumed under the proscribed or implied elements of the institution. Rural cemeteries cannot simply be analyzed or understood as clusters of graves. Interpretation of these 19th century cemeteries must, therefore, not only account for the variety among individual graves but also for the overriding common elements expressed in all such cemeteries. The exercise below focuses on historic cemeteries. Such variations often reflect how a culture is changing, how cultures differ from one another, and how artifacts reflect these changes and differences.