Per your request, on behalf of Southeastern Archeological services, I conducted archival research and archaeological investigation of a known cemetery on the north side of Pope Road about 650 ft west of Pedenville Road in western Pike County. The cemetery is depicted and labeled as the Pope Cemetery on the 7.5' USGS Gay quadrangle map (see attached). It is also depicted on the plat map of your property that you sent me (Pike County Plat Book 34 p. 7), but it is labeled as the Polk Graveyard on this plat, which I believe is a naming error. You sent me Pike regulation governing developing a parcel of land that contains a cemetery, which references and incorporates Georgia's code sections dealing with this issue (OCGA 36-72-1 et seq.). You explained to me that you want to develop the 76.7 ac parcel that contains the cemetery, and that you do not want to move the cemetery, but rather have it professionally delineated so that it can be properly platted and avoided by any future development, per Pike county regulations. Thus, the principal goal of my investigation was to determine the maximum limits of graves associated with this cemetery. Our firm has conducted more than 60 such delineations and has exhumed graves at 19 cemeteries in Georgia since 1984. I an1 a Registered Professional Archaeologist who worked on the majority of our company cemetery projects. In addition, I was the leader of the effort to locate and document all cemeteries in my home county of Oglethorpe, and in doing so visited and visually delineated about 450 cemeteries.
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