The Big Lazer Creek Unmarked Cemetery: A Multidisciplinary Investigation

This project focused on the excavation and analysis of six historic period graves discovered during construction within the Big Baker Creek Wildlife Management Area in Talbot County, Georgia. Interdisciplinary research, involving historical, archaeological, and physical anthropology studies, was brought to bear under an explicit research design that was aimed at explaining the nature of the cemetery where the graves were located and at identifying the individuals within the graves. The six graves were found to include three adolescents and two adults. One grave was too heavily disturbed to support analysis, and may have consisted of displaced bones and artifacts from other graves. Two of the adolescents were buried during the period from ca.1825 to the 1850s, while the third was interred during the 1850s. One of the adults was a male who was buried between 1900 and 1920, and was 55 to 65 years old at death. The other adult was a female aged 40 to 50 at death, who was buried around 1900. A total of four burials, including the two adults, were complete enough to support analysis to determine race, and all were white. The area where the graves were located was determined to have been a probable extension of the marked Smith family cemetery, located less than 180 feet to the south. At least some of the burials may have been members of the Charles L. Smith, Sr. family, who owned the property through much or all of the nineteenth century.