Identification and Evaluation of Georgia’s Historic Burial Grounds: Context and Handbook
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has identified the need to create a context and handbook for the cultural resource preservation professional to aid in the identification and evaluation of the historic significance of Georgia’s burial grounds for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Written by New South Associates, Inc. in close coordination with GDOT, and in consultation with the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office, this context will aid state and federal agencies in fulfilling the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) by establishing a framework for determining how a Georgia cemetery may rise to a level of significance to be considered NRHP eligible. Cemeteries are a physical place where historical, emotional, spiritual, and scientific interests overlap. This makes them complicated historic resources for reasons that will be introduced and explained throughout this handbook. While written for cultural resource professionals, this handbook may serve the additional purpose of helping anyone interested in Georgia’s cemeteries understand their development, composition, and the important role they have played, and continue to contribute to, Georgia’s history and culture. This context and handbook covers only postcontact period cemeteries in Georgia. Precontact American Indian burial grounds are a distinct group and should not be evaluated under the more Euro-and Afro-centric framework presented in this guidebook.
Although we choose to mourn our dead in differing manners, all human cultures share a desire to handle death and the bodies of those who have died in what they consider to be a respectful, culturally appropriate manner. Many factors influence these choices, such as religion, politics, environment, history, and ethnicity. Each choice has the potential to provide a window into the wider values of a society or culture. All of Georgia’s cemeteries contain stories, and each is a special place to those whose loved ones are buried there. However, not every cemetery is eligible for listing on the National Register. Some cemeteries have the potential to tell a broader story of their community, the state, or a people. This handbook serves as guidance for preservation professionals to aid in identifying and evaluating burial places that can best serve as windows to the societies, cultures, religions, communities, or families that created them. Each section of the handbook builds upon the other to provide the background, tools/language, and framework for arriving at an eligibility recommendation.
This document was developed by the Georgia Department of Transportation and New South Associates in coordination with the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office. The context is also available on the GDOT Cultural Resources webpage at https://www.dot.ga.gov/GDOT/pages/CulturalResourcesProjects.aspx