This photograph, taken in the early 1900s and preserved in the Carl Stone Philippines collection, shows a Spanish colonial-era cemetery wall in the Philippines. Deceased were interred in tiered wall niches, a Catholic funerary tradition introduced during more than 300 years of Spanish rule and still practiced today. The overgrown state of the wall reflects the passage of time in the years following the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), when the islands came under American administration and photographs such as this one were often taken by U.S. servicemen and civilians documenting local sites. Project: 218144