About 5,000 graves from the historical Bukit Brown and Seh Ong cemeteries (hereafter cemetery complex) in Singapore were exhumed in 2013 to make way for an eight-lane carriageway. Prior to the exhumations, grave inscriptions and features were documented digitally and geotagged using GPS, and during the exhumations, burial items were recorded comprehensively. The data collected through this extensive documentation work produced a heritage inventory that could be dated (based on the inscriptions), mapped and spatially analysed. This paper seeks to reflect the socio-economic and cultural patterns associated with the graves, and how they intersect with the spatial-temporal development of the cemetery, and to some extent, the social history of Singapore.

The data for the heritage inventory were collected under the auspices of the Bukit Brown Documentation Project (BBDP) in 2011-2014 within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework. At that time, the Principal Investigator of the BBDP (also the first author of this paper) focused on completing comprehensive documentation of the graves and burial items that were unearthed through the exhumation process. This massive amount of geotagged data underwent systematic post-processing to facilitate rigorous analysis within a GIS framework. The post-processing and analysis included: (i) inscriptions, and the structural and material cultural features of graves; and (ii) burial items. In addition, historical context was supplemented through archival research and oral history interviews.

For (i) and (ii), post-processing involved further coding of the data for meaningful analysis, following two major lines of inquiry, namely, the investigation of patterns among graves based on socio-economic status and Chinese sub-ethnic cultural categories. Where socio-economic status is concerned, grave features and burial items were further coded to determine socio-economic status. In terms of Chinese sub-ethnic cultural categories, inscriptions, grave features and burial items were coded to reveal the sub-ethnic origins of the deceased (i.e. Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese and others). Furthermore, spatial analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between socio-economic status/cultural origins and the distribution of graves in the cemetery complex.

The dataset is of substantial heritage value, not least because the cemetery complex in question consists of both Bukit Brown Cemetery (BBC) and Seh Ong Cemetery (SOC). The former was opened as a municipal Chinese cemetery in 1922 and closed to burial in 1973, although it was almost fully populated by 1944 during World War 2. BBC was divided into five blocks of standard-sized plots organized into grids that faced the same direction, and the blocks were filled sequentially, i.e. from Block 1 to Block 5. The land for SOC was acquired, partly as burial grounds reserved exclusively for Hokkien Ong clansmen, in 1872. Burial in SOC followed the conventions of clan association cemeteries, whereby the size and location of the plot depended on the wealth and social standing of the deceased. The graves that were affected by the road project and thereby documented happened to be distributed across SOC and all five blocks of BBC, thus providing an excellent sample of graves of different cultural and socio-economic origins from the late Qing dynasty period (late 19th and early 20th centuries) to the early Republican period (after 1911) and World War 2.

Through analysing this unique and extensive dataset, the paper seeks to shed light on the socio-economic patterns and cultural patterns in the landscape of the cemetery complex, incorporating both the spatial and temporal dimensions. The following are the key questions that the paper will address.
1. Socio-economic patterns
i) In what ways does socio-economic status affect the distribution of graves in the cemetery complex. While it is almost definite that socio-economic status determines the location of the burial plot in SOC, does socio-economic status play a role in BBC? More specifically, would socio-economic status be reflected spatially, given the Chinese penchant for higher burial grounds in association with better fengshui (geomancy)?
ii) Would socio-economic patterns be temporally significant? That is, would there be certain periods, such as the 1930s Depression and the onset of the World War 2 years, where socio-economic status or wellbeing, as reflected by graves and burial items, would take a general dip?
2. Cultural patterns
i) Beyond the common sub-ethnic cultural categories, i.e. Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese, are there other cultural categories that salient through the material culture of the cemetery, such as Peranakan?
ii) Are there spatial patterns in how the cultural groups are distributed in the cemetery complex?
iii) In what ways do these cultural categories affect inscriptions, grave features and burial items?

The post-processing of the dataset and examination of the above questions propel the study beyond conventional epigraphic analysis to provide sociological and cultural analyses of a deathscape, thus furnishing us with a more holistic understanding of the heritage value of the historical cemetery complex. At the same time, it extends GIS-related mapping and analysis of cemetery data in recent years beyond gravestone morphology to incorporate material culture related to both aboveground features and underground artifacts.