AbstractReburial Planning Efforts at the Joint Courts Complex Archaeological ProjectTrack: Archaeology Author Data recovery at the Joint Courts Complex Archaeological Project involved the removal of over 1,300 burials from an historic cemetery in downtown Tucson, AZ. The vast majority of the human remains and associated artifacts were reinterred at another cemetery in Tucson. This paper describes and explains a variety of GIS methods for converting the spatial layout of the excavated grave pits to a much smaller plot for reburial. A real-world coordinate 40-by-35 grid of cells was created to serve as the index for systematically linking the grave features to their respective reburial boxes. Emphasis was placed on respecting the original spatial relationships among the grave features while minimizing the area required for the reburial plot. Other considerations included the need to transfer the 3-D excavation space into a flat 2-D reburial plot and accommodating the varying number of reburial boxes per grave feature. Stephen McElroy Statistical Research, Inc. 6099 E. Speedway Blvd. Tucson, Arizona 85712 United States Phone: 520-721-4309 E-mail: smcelroy@sricrm.com |