Baldwin Hall expansion becomes anthropology project

The Baldwin Hall expansion construction site has garnered new attention over the last few months. The department of anthopology faculty and students will now curate and study the remains that have been recovered:

Work to locate and exhume remains from gravesites at the site has been underway since the first remains were inadvertently discovered on Nov. 17, 2015. Baldwin Hall is adjacent to the Old Athens Cemetery, which UGA has been working to preserve and stabilize since 2007. University planners did not anticipate discovering remains on the site, as oral histories and information provided by local historians indicated that all remains had been removed and reinterred when Baldwin Hall was originally constructed in 1938 and when the Baldwin Hall extension was built in the mid-1940s.

Construction at the site has been temporarily suspended until removal of the remains is completed. This meticulous process, which was slowed by persistent, heavy rain in December, will continue over the course of the next few weeks. Work at the construction site will resume under the administration of the Office of University Architects for Facilities Planning once the exhumation is complete.

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The anthropology department's academic project will consist of two phases.

In the first phase of the project that will be conducted this spring semester, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students will conduct basic osteological research that will include DNA analysis to help identify age, sex and ancestral affiliation of these individuals. This work will not result in a determination of the specific identity of individual remains. In addition to the DNA analysis, the remains will be examined non-destructively using digital radiographic imaging.

During the second phase of the project in the summer and fall semesters, the research will shift to the living conditions of the individuals: for example, health, activity patterns and diet. 

Though it is a controversial discovery and opens amny questions - from historical to modern uses of campus - this collaboration is as it should. It is a tremendous positive for our students in social sciences to engage with this opportunity that is quite literally right in their backyard. This is precisely the way such a development should be handled. We look forward to more informed reporting on who and what has been disturbed in the course of the construction, as this research continues to help us understand just who we are.

Image: Honor's Anthropology class works in the Jackson Street Cemetary, 2010. Peter Frey/UGA Photographic services.