On occasion when the Mississippi River levels are too high, spillways must be opened to preserve the City of New Orleans. The Morganza Spillway can divert water into the Atchafalaya Basin. The area where the Spillway is located used to be habitable land. Construction of the spillway required that people leave the area, abandoning both their homes and their ancestors. Currently, there are several cemeteries located within the Morganza spillway, they were last checked in 2019 when again, high flooding threatened the area with the possible opening of the spillway. These cemeteries are researched to determine their status, the impact that the opening of the spillway, and how the prediction of future openings may affect archaeological sites within the spillway. We propose to examine resources that are often overlooked in climate assessments, but are likely to be impacted with increasing frequency in the coming years.

Between 1848 and 1909, many patients who died in the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane in Indianapolis were buried on its grounds. In 2020, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) built a kennel at the unmarked but well-documented cemetery. During excavation, several burials were disturbed while digging trenches for utility lines. The burials are under threat once again as the IMPD continues to use the grounds to construct additional facilities for their police dog training program. This paper investigates the histories and experiences of the patients laid to rest in the hospital cemetery. The goal of this project is to examine how we contextualize heritage and dignity after death and how trauma shapes the way we memorialize the marginalized. 

The First Baptist Church of Philadelphia (1707-1859) cemetery was incompletely relocated in 1859 prior to the parcel’s sale to a manufacturer of felt hats. Discovered by developers below a 20^th century parking lot, the remaining section of the cemetery contained the graves of over 400 individuals. Early church membership rolls include congregants from a broad economic spectrum and of European and African descents. Excellent preservation within the burials extends to the coffin wood and hardware, including handles, grip plates, and lid plaques, and permits a detailed assessment of burial receptacle construction and decoration. Among the hardware are imported pieces depicted in British catalogs and unique objects that may have been produced locally, such as a plaque that depicts a dancing angel with facial features suggestive of African descent and furniture pulls repurposed as lid handles.

The presence of coins placed within the graves of historic African American cemeteries has been interpreted as a static African mortuary practice brought through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. However, this practice is the product of a heavily creolized cultural identity that was dynamically altered through continuous cross-cultural interactions. The placement of coins on or around the eyes of the corpse was routinely practiced in medieval British Isles and British America, as payment for passage to the afterlife. West African mortuary programs also employed rituals to safeguard liminality of the soul. As a result of the African Diaspora, historic African American culture employed a creolized dual symbology in which the use of coins placed with the corpse acted to prevent harm to the liminal soul. These superimposed socio-ideological practices are indicative of a theoretical palimpsest that can be seen in the archaeological record.

Firsthand accounts of the early years at James Fort paint a grim picture of death, apathy, and scarcity, and the nearly-failed colony has maintained a haunted reputation through the centuries in literature and historical tomes alike. In recent years, evidence of cannibalism has called attention to deviant treatment of the dead during the infamous “Starving Time.” While the death toll of the colony due to disease, starvation, and violence is undeniable, archaeological evidence from the site suggests that the dead at Jamestown were relatively well treated and carefully interred by their community. This paper will explore burial clothing practices at the dawn of the 17^th century in combination with contemporary attitudes towards epidemics and proper mortuary care. Pictorial and archaeological evidence will be considered with aims to understanding what post-mortem care truly awaited dying colonists at the first permanent English settlement in America.

Established in the 1920s, the Oak Grove Colored Cemetery in Graham, Texas served as the only offical burial ground for African Americans in Young County during the Jim Crow era. The cemetery was used until the end of the 1960s but neighboring properties slowly encroached upon Oak Grove after 1970. Efforts to reclaim the cemetery were initiated by the descendant community in collaboration with an archaeological team from Texas Tech University. The first phase of investigations, including surface scraping to identify grave shafts, metal detecting, mapping, and GIS along with community outreach, has helped identify the degree of intrusion from adjacent properties and detect the locations of previoulsy obscured graves. Results of the initial phase or work are discussed and objectives for future reseach are also defined.