RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Archaeologists locate some 1,700 graves surveying, mapping School St. cemetery
Now the researchers are taking the data collected to make a map of the cemetery and will return to use radar to search for any unmarked graves in adjacent areas. "This is a fascinating cemetery, with marked graves going back to 1870," said Joe Joseph, PhD, of New South Associates. "The size of the cemetery and the number of graves - 1,700 graves over 7.7 acres - shows it probably went back to the plantation era." The School Street Cemetery project includes the now-completed cemetery plot survey, then a condition assessment, development of a preservation plan, development of a heritage tourism plan, and development of a heritage tourism brochure. The effort is part of the Historic Preservation Division (HPD) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' initiative to fund a statewide cemetery preservation effort, entitled "Campaign to Preserve Georgia's Historic Cemeteries."
The mapping team used computers to map the cemetery and put in the locations of all the grave markers, tomb slabs, and unmarked grave locations, plus tree and other landscape features. In August, a team from the Georgia Department of Transportation will come and explore an adjacent area, behind the basketball courts on School Street, where the experts feel other burials may be found. The GDOT team will use ground-penetrating radar to locate old graves without disturbing the ground. A second team will return with the newly produced map and record information from each grave site, and note the need for a grave marker or for restoration, he said. "Then the folks who have family buried there will be able to look up where they are."
The end product of the cemetery project will be a complete report and preservation plan that describes the cemetery as it is, the steps needed to protect and restore it, and that documents its history.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
)
)
