CHAPTER 1: (Continued) The Missing Dead

Traditional cemeteries have a harmonious relationship with their surrounding features when first established. But continuously evolving landscapes due to land use modifications over time results in and out-of-place relationships between earlier established Traditional cemeteries and more recently established infrastructural, such as interstate access routes. As landscape modifications accrue over time a disharmonious relationships between Traditional cemeteries and surrounding landscape features occurs that encourage adaptation to new world views and the annihilation of older views. Cemetery landscapes are testimonials of a past formerly associated with older landscape features, but today, many traditional cemeteries appear “out of place” amidst new land uses.
Situated amidst new landscapes and land uses, Traditional cemeteries become isolated from access, overgrown and encroached on. The unsightliness of traditional cemetery abandonment promotes a preference for burial in Memorial Parks that offer assurances of landscape maintenance into perpetuity. The increasing difficulty of access of older Traditional cemeteries contrasts with the ease of Memorial Park access along new urban interstates. Increasingly, Memorial Park popularity and the visible blight of Traditional cemetery abandonment promote Traditional cemetery closure. Sometimes mortuaries refuse to provide service to poorly maintained or closed cemeteries further contributing to Traditional cemetery abandonment. This poor maintenance and abandonment in turn promotes an increase in the volume of burial in Memorial Parks. Eventually, all visible reminders of abandoned Traditional cemeteries are razed from the surface. Intentional razing and abandoned of Traditional cemeteries from the surface occurs when grave markers are removed to make way for new development. Unintentional razing occurs when time erodes visible signs of a place for the dead.
Many factors contribute to traditional cemetery abandonment, but most significant is settlement pattern change. By cross-referencing local, state and national data map sources of cemetery location information, it’s possible to find and identify abandoned Traditional cemeteries. For example, in order to track down Traditional Cemeteries, one can use old maps such as the U.S. Geological Survey topographic map series. Cultural-historic research of maps at local and state agencies can reveal the location and timing changes in the placement of old cemetery. The identification of cemetery locations on historic maps is one method for identifying razed cemetery locations prior to subsurface disturbance.
However, decades prior to regional surveys that recorded cultural features on maps, many Traditional cemeteries were already abandoned. They were no longer visible on the surface, and, thus, were not recorded on maps. Cemeteries that were never documented on maps, or officially acknowledged in any manner are particularly sensitive to abandonment and encroachment by development. So in addition to historic map research, cultural-historic processes that weaken ties with the past can be examined as factors that contribute to changing attitudes toward a place for the dead. By contextualizing Traditional cemeteries with the transportation and population of the time, it is possible to identify their probable location. Cultural -historic reconstruction of the location, time and social relationships of abandoned Traditional cemeteries can reveal the severing of ties to these formerly revered landscapes. By looking at this cultural-historic reconstruction of location and time relationships, the locations of a greater number of undocumented cemeteries have the potential to be recognized.
Compiling Traditional cemetery location information from several sources into a regional database management could prevent the happenstance discovery of cemeteries that were razed from the surface. Construction on land that was formerly used for human burials could be avoided, or at the very least, precautionary measures could be taken in preparation for the potential discovery of human remains.
Identification of Traditional cemeteries documented from several sources, and a predictive model based on cultural-historic reconstruction can fill in the gaps of an otherwise incomplete record. In this way undocumented cemetery locations can be predicted, and predicting the locations of undocumented cemetery locations that are potentially no longer visible on the surface serves the purposes of archaeologists, cultural-historic geographers, preservationists and land developers. A predictive model for identifying forgotten cemetery locations has great potential for cultural-historic reconstruction of changing attitudes toward a place for the dead in America, and elsewhere.