Harold Mytum has been recording and researching graveyards and cemeteries, and their monuments, for many years in Britain and Ireland, USA, Gibraltar and Australia. Most publications have concentrated on how religious, ethnic or professional identities have been displayed on memorials. Harold promotes systematic recording beyond that of monumental inscriptions and has developed a monument recording system that is the national standard; this was updated in 2019. Harold has also promoted and implemented the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) in monument recording. His current interests are burial ground dynamics over time and the role of placemaking in the commissioning and erection of memorials. Harold also researches coffins and their fittings, and forms of burial shafts, crypts, and vaults as part of an archaeological investigation of all aspects of historic mortuary culture. He collaborates with community groups, archaeological contractors and burial ground managers in research and outreach, and promotes the value of burial grounds in contemporary society by encouraging appreciation of the cultural as well as the better-known ecological value of such spaces in urban and rural contexts.

Mytum, H. (2004) Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period, New York, Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Mytum, H. & Burgess, L. (eds) (2018) Death Across Oceans. Archaeology of Coffins and Vaults in Britain, America and Australia, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington.

Mytum, H. & Veit, R. (eds) (2023) Innovation and Implementation: Critical reflections on New Approaches to Historic Mortuary Data Collection, Analysis and Dissemination, New York: Berghahn.

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/archaeology-classics-and-egyptology/staff/harold-mytum/