This is actually quite unique in its difference of carving style from a lot of period burials I've seen pictures and video of in the past. I think this one also looks like a sandstone or limestone, more porous rock used to carve the headstone above. If it is that, the detail is much more complex and striking than the more 'rough' look in your post from a couple of days ago (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/28417930/) which you confirmed was indeed carved from red sandstone, an unusual choice for the era.

-2Paw.

I believe it's granite.

I concur, given a bit of thought on it, and your confirmation thus at your end. It looks...I don't know, pitted in some way, evenly so across the surface, more betraying (to me, anyway) a reflection of the original material the stone was hewn away from and the carved into the gravestone pictured here. But of course that could just be weathering. And the actual carving is of extreme detail, as well as having survived almost entirely unscathed by weather or vandalism, these past two-hundred and twenty-two years since the headstone was placed in the firmament of this particular graveyard. The other headstone, linked above, made of red sandstone, was not only pitted but looked distinctly porous, which suggested a much lighter, less dense stone being used to make it (which I thought would've been a limestone or sandstone, and which you confirmed as red sandstone not long afterwards).

I've often wondered how different the industry of quarrying for precise carvings like grave markers would've been two or three hundred years ago, respective of a lack of the technology we have available now just to hew the stone out of the ground and get it to where it will be dressed. Something like a sandstone is going to be fragile, very easily damaged with a good sharp shock or drop onto a floor or ground (as opposed to granite, which while it could be damaged thus, it would take a lot more force and impact to do it), so I expect whatever quarryman supplied the raw sandstone in the headstone linked in my earlier post to the intended stonecarver, would probably be delivered by the quarry itself (if not the quarryman himself) and at a relatively short distance from his mason's workshop, to prevent a lengthy journey which might easily result in multiple fractures and render the raw stone useless for the purposes of carving a headstone in a single piece.

Getting back to this headstone, GiC, or at least burial carvings of its vintage, I still find the rather unusual and unique representation of this stone's 'Death Angel' to be quite striking. I've rarely seen one of them pictured in this way in any of the headstones you've posted in your pictures here, nor in Youtube videos or still images online that I've found on my own. Have you found this style of carved 'Death Angel' on other headstones with any frequency (if at all) in your travels? Secondly, have you been able to establish at all in your researches, whether or not the variety (if so) of unique or customized headstone carvings in burials from the 17th or 18th Century in colonial-era America was as 'liberal' and without particular societal restrictions on design as modern burials often are?

Thanks again for posting back, GiC!

-2Paw.