Hold Your Light on Canaan's Shore: A Historical and Archaeological Investigation of the Avondale Burial place (9BI164) Vol. 1: Report of Investigation, Vol. 2: Feature Descriptions

The identification of an unrecognized burial area within the construction right-of-way for improvements to be made to Sardis Church Road, in Bibb County, Georgia prompted the survey and relocation of human remains in accordance with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) Scope of Work entitled Historic Cemetery Disinterment and Relocation, Project STP- 0000- 00(566), Bibb County, Georgia, issued on November 21, 2008. New South Associates, Inc. conducted survey and fieldwork for this project between April 9, 2009 and June 30, 2010, under a contract with PBS&J (now Atkins Global), for GDOT. The features, artifacts, and human remains from this cemetery are summarized in this two-volume report. The cemetery was unmarked and unknown at the time the road extension was designed and was discovered by GDOT when a local landowner informed Historian Sharman Southall that he had been told a cemetery was located in the project area. Ground penetrating radar, search and rescue dogs, and exploratory trenching identified a number of potential graves. Subsequent excavation revealed 106 features containing 101 human mortuary features. The remaining features were identified as tree or bush molds, a post mold, a buried dog, and the partial remains of a cow. The results indicate that this cemetery, referred to herein as the Avondale Burial Place, contained the remains of an African American community from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Graves dating to the 1870s can be positively identified and inferential evidence suggests that a pre- Emancipation component may also be present. These burials probably represent slaves, ex- slaves, and slave descendants who worked on antebellum and postbellum plantations and farms of the area. Skeletal evidence provided details that were consistent with African American health conditions recorded in Central Georgia. An examination of the material remains demonstrated that 9BI164 was a southern folk cemetery with a mix of lowland/coastal African American and upland-like funeral traditions. All mortuary related materials and human remains recovered from the project area were re-interred at the Bethel AME Church in Byron, Georgia.