The Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville, Arkansas represents a landscape of valor, a landscape of honor, and a sacred landscape of states' rights. The cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been, and still is, owned and cared for by the Southern Memorial Association since their formation in 1872 and the cemetery construction and dedication in 1873. Curious visitors that seek out this quiet and peaceful site are greeted by an ornate iron gate, flanked by two massive stone pillars, one of which has a sign warning that trespassers will be punished to the extent of the law, although such regulation is not enforced today. Beyond the gate, are four large burial plots, oriented at cardinal directions and containing soldiers from the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas, among others. In the center is a large cornerstone monument, atop which stands the statue of a Confederate soldier guarding his fallen comrades.

The use of both historical and geophysical data demonstrates that the cemetery does indeed represent a landscape of states' rights. Historical documents reveal the construction of the cemetery focused on an urgency to honor those confederate soldiers who fought for the southern cause of state independence and rights; to provide them a place to rest in burial plots that correlate to the geographical location of the states associated with each soldier. Geophysical data reveal that soldiers, buried throughout the battlefields of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, were exhumed and reburied at the confederate cemetery, not as mass burials within each burial plot, as we considered when first proposing this research, but rather buried individually in an orderly and ritualistic manner. The central monument, with the large confederate soldier statue atop and the seemingly defensive position of the marble artillery at the base, suggests symbolism concerning the militaristic protection, throughout time, of those that are buried within the sacred cemetery space. If nothing more, the confederate cemetery as defined by the women of the Southern Memorial Association, represents "a tangible reminder of the brave men who died for a way of life they held dear and the proud women who loved and honored them." Even today, every June 10th on the anniversary of the dedication of the cemetery in 1873, the Southern Memorial Association hosts Southern Memorial Days, where community members flock to the cemetery grounds and continue to honor and pay respect to those buried within the Landscape of States' Rights.

rev. 11/10