The article addresses a source rarely used by social researchers, namely the inscriptions on wayside crosses in rural settings. Crosses erected “in memory of” preserve social memory and forestall the natural process of oblivion. These inscriptions are the products of social reflection, and express collective representations and the collective opinion of the community. One can deduce the values most important to the community, and those most endangered, from the wording imprinted on the crosses. The preserved inscriptions are all the more valuable as a state of collective consciousness in rural communities has yet to be constructed on the basis of individual testimonies in the form of letters or diaries. The inscriptions on crosses in an area of the Lublin voivodeship, enriched with information gathered regarding the local context, constitute the article’s empirical basis.
