Hi Kris:)

Here in Tennessee, prior to the slow introduction of historical archaeology
in the 1970s, and even occasionally as late as the 1990s, cemetery removals
were traditionally conducted by funeral home directors using unskilled labor
in a project more ritual than systematic.  Disinterment meant digging up
graves with surface markers or with visible signs of subsidence, typically
by chopping into the grave with a backhoe until bone is encountered and then
shoveling what could be found in the hole into a bodybag, coffin, concrete
box, whatever seemed to be supplied by the funeral home.  The complete grave
is usually never exposed so you could end up with either end or the
mid-section chopped into, although most unskilled laborers could probably
tell you what a skull was and what long bones were.  My point is...funeral
home directors and laborers are never trained in careful or systematic
excavation.  I have witnessed and heard of horrific removals, grave
lootings, and similar desecrations. often resulting in a telephone call to
my office so I can go out and finish the disinterment.

In our state, human remains and mortuary furniture are protected under the
state cemetery statutes which define the legal status of burial grounds and
provide a legal buffer zone of ten feet around individual graves.  The
statutes provide termination relief for land owners through the chancery
court system and once enacted, this court order can usually be reused if
additional graves are observed on the property later.  For instance, I just
removed two interments dating from the 1880s from under an elementary school
campus under renovation.  The interments were in brick crypts which
prohibited significant subsidence and were simply missed by a funeral home
which relocated the cemetery (100+ individuals) in the 1950s so the school
could be built.  The original court order from the 1950s was used to
disinter these two burials but a new state permit from the health department
was required.

In a situation like you are talking about, I would probably first try
removing the overburden mechanically to identify individual graveshafts and
then randomly sample the shafts to assess the accuracy of the disinterment.
You could start out with a small sample size and increase it if needed.
Knowing that the traditional burial orientation here is west to east and
that unskilled funeral home workers probably know what a skull looks like, I
would probably sample whatever shafts my random number generator indicated
with a fifty centimeter square shovel test at the head (west).  In our
state, if I found one grave to be intact then I would advise my client that
he or she still owned a cemetery and notify the proper authorities while
advising the client of their options.

I have been cursed with fire-raking tons of back dirt to retrieve human
remains before, and its kinda like somebody taking apart your car engine and
leaving it for you to put back together:):):)

In this state, if you encounter any human remains during construction or
other activities you are required by law to cease such activities and
contact the state archaeologist and local police department to report such
remains.  This is also usually applied to mortuary furniture.  These changes
in state law have only taken place in the last 20 years and they have been
instrumental in limiting the ritualistic desecration of burial grounds for
the sake of gaining additional property.

Dan Allen
Staff Histarch
Mortuary Specialist
DuVall & Associates, Inc.

My views...not DuVall's:)