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Ears or a sheaf of wheat carved on a monument.
Also known as: Sheaf of wheat, Ears of corn, Wheat on a gravestone
Wheat. Conventionally read as a long life harvested in due season, and — where a sickle appears with it — as the harvest of death. It is also, straightforwardly, an occupational marker on farming communities' graves.
Ears or a bound sheaf of wheat carved on a monument, conventionally denoting a long life brought to harvest in due season, and so most often found on the graves of the old.
Contexts: History
Where a sickle or scythe is shown with the wheat the pair is read as the harvest of death, a reading that draws on the same imagery as the figure of Death as a reaper.
In farming communities frequently an occupational marker rather than a metaphor, which is the reading to consider first in a rural burial ground.
In Christian contexts also carries a eucharistic association, wheat and vine together denoting bread and wine.
Several stalks of wheat carved with grain-heads of overlapping husks at the top, bound together at the middle with a band.
Both depict a bound sheaf of wheat; the heraldic garb is a charge and this is a memorial motif.