the cultural historian James Hijiya raised concerns on the prevailing academic approach and methodology, and noted how the early carvers left no account record of their intentions, and so their motives cannot be easily interpreted, and observed that there is no remaining instance of any articulated evidence which indicates even "their outlook on life and death." Although a significant scholar in the field, Hijiya urges that reading into the meaning of any stone has to consider "information extraneous to the stones themselves" such as "writings produced at the same time as the carvings, though by different hands [and] aesthetic or anthropological theory which purports to illuminate human behavior at any time". Hijiya suggested an approach similar to the art historian Erwin Panofsky, that there is no reason to assume that any decoration is "uniquely determined." Style In contrast to contemporary US headstones, the remaining early Puritan examples are low sized and wide. They were typically capped with a rounded tympanum resembling the semi-circular half stones often found above the main doorway entrances into churches. The tympanum thus has symbolic meaning, reflecting the belief that through death, the soul moves from one world into the next. The theologian and minister William Perkins wrote that death was "a little wicket or doore whereby we passe out of this world and enter into heaven." This belief is also evident in some of the inscriptions, where the date of death is prefaced by terms such as "translated" or "exchanged" rather than "died". The phrase "Here Lies the Body" (or "Here lyes Buried the Body") makes this more explicit, implying that while the remains are present in the ground below, the soul has gone elsewhere. Hijiya divides Northeastern American gravestones into six broad and overlapping styles reflective of "six different attitudes toward death". Of these, the first three are strictly "puritan", before the style softened into Unitarianism and Methodism imagery. The six styles as described by Hijiya are: "Plain Style" (1640–1710): Resignation "Death's Head" (1670–1770): Awe "Cherubs" / "Angels" (1740–1820): Confidence "Urn and Willow" (1780–1850): Mourning "Monumentalism" (1840–1920): Defiance "Modern Plain Style" (1900–2001): Ignorance Plain Style The first generation of settlers did not utilize communal burial grounds, and instead buried their dead on the highest point on their property, with individual graves marked with wooden slabs or field-stones. The earliest New England Puritan burying grounds date from the 1630s, and were, according to writer Meg