The article presents the main assumptions of historical studies of cemeteries, which combine cultural landscape studies and historical semantics of contemporary material heritage. The tested cultural landscape is the territory of former East Prussia, which is today a part of the lands of north-eastern Poland. The central analyzed objects are family cemeteries established in the period from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of existence East Prussia in 1945. These studies combine empirical analysis of the material heritage elements of the region with the reconstruction of original social images, networks of cultural-historical meanings that creates the interpretative model of cemeteries as elements of the cultural landscape and, at the same time, the original model for their creation in appropriate historical arrangements.