[Tagging] Draft proposal for historic cemetery

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

Am Mi., 10. Feb. 2021 um 00:10 Uhr schrieb Diego Cruz <ginkarasu at gmail.com>:

> Local users can easily verify if a cemetery is historic or not. This is
> partly subjective, but you need to trust local users' common sense, as in
> any other tag.
>





> Is there a series of Baroque tombs? It's historic.
>


so it is about age? When you say "baroque", do you mean from the 17th/18th
century, or would late 18th, 19th and 20th century "baroque" also qualify?
The monumental cemetery of Verano (Rome) would probably qualify, although
it was opened only in 1812 (while the baroque period ended around 1740) and
most (?) of it is from the 20th century:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cimitero_del_Verano (on the
other hand, maybe this does not qualify, because there is also a very old
christian place of worship, Saint Lawrence outside the Walls, from the 4th
century AD, which is even a Papal Basilica, and the proposal says: "Its
scope of application is limited to cemeteries in the sense in which they
are understood in OpenStreetMap: «places usually independent of place of
worship» and «not close to a place of worship»"?)

I guess even younger cemeteries would qualify to be "historic", for example
world war I cemeteries like Douaumont?  https://www.verdun-douaumont.com/en/
This seems an easy case, because it is also a kind of historic=monument for
the Verdun battle.

Also this is probably a no-brainer, although people are now living there
(it is much older than baroque):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_the_Dead_(Cairo)

Generally, I see a lot of overlap with archaeological site for many
historic burial places. All of them which are older than a few hundred
years will probably also qualify for archaelogical site, and there are also
already site types established for it:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:site_type in particular: necropolis

Would the Gizeh site qualify for historic=cemetery? A massgrave from the
Bosnian war?



> Is it the last remaining Jewish cemetery of a region? It's historic.
>


I find it a bit difficult to make a qualitative assessment based on how
rare something is. If locally there are many old jewish cemeteries, they
would not qualify, but if there is only one left, it would? I am not very
familiar with jewish tradition but I thought to remember that their deads
rest "forever" (or until salvation by the Messiah) in their burial places,
so the cemetery would remain forever a cemetery, even if there are no new
burials, not?


Is Chopin buried there? It's historic.
>


burial places of famous people are likely noteworthy, but I am not sure the
whole cemetery becomes historic because Chopin is buried there - or Jim
Morrison. (on a sidenote, no doubt that Père Lachaise is a historic
cemetery).

Not that I could not agree that many cemeteries, or even most, according to
the area you look at, are of historic value. It's almost implicit,
especially for every cemetery older than a few decades and of significant
size. Everybody dies, also famous people, and rich people who can afford to
engage notable artists for the funeral monument, so it seems logical that
any cemetery in a bigger city will have some famous people buried there.

My recommendation would be to focus on mapping the things that make the
cemetery "historic", both in terms of components (tombs etc.) but also
regarding the attributes of the whole site. E.g. for the age, when it is
known, I would recommend to add explicit reference to the start_date, it is
a datum that already tells more than any historic=yes or cemetery
qualifiers. If it is unknown, you could still add a rough timespan.
Additionally to a start date, it would be interesting to have the "main
period", because it may well be the case that the cemetery was used for
hundreds or even thousands of years, but most of the current tombs are from
a much later time.

Cheers
Martin
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