Folkloristic Ways of Looking at - and Beyond - the Recent Phenomenon of Roadside Memorials, Crosses and Floral Tributes

It is postulated at various points in the following survey paper that most of the significant changes in the manifested public sudden and accidental death would appear to have taken place in the last two generations. Television, brutal little wars, terrorism and Americanization/ globalism and its habit of publicity of 'killing fields' and of the shocking and the brutal may all be contributory causes to popular culture's sacralisation of the places where such death has occurred or been deliberately commemorated.