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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
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Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
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Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
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West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Eastern Utah find only one of many secrets held by Utah archaeologists |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 26 June 2004 |
By: PAUL FOY - Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- The discovery of spectacular pre-Columbian ruins in eastern Utah was just one of the many secrets archaeologists have guarded about ancient finds in the West.
A culture of silence surrounds countless sites ranging from pictographs to pit houses. Government agencies don't have to describe the locations of off-the-map sites, and in some cases are prohibited by law from making any disclosures.
Many government archaeological records, including sketches and photographs, are exempt from sunshine laws. And even the government doesn't know about everything out there.
"We probably haven't inventoried much over 5 percent of Utah's total public lands," Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Doug McFadden said Friday.
"So there's a lot out there to be explored. Whether anyone has seen those sites or not really doesn't matter, but 95 percent of them remain to be documented properly," he said.
Part of McFadden's job is to systemically cover the 1.9-million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, looking for ancient dwellings or artifacts. It's a job that could take a lifetime.
Utah's master list of archaeological sites is classified.
"We're probably up around 30,000" sites, assistant state archaeologist Ron Rood said. "The sites the public knows about are basically restricted to those advertised in national parks."
It's for good reason: many of the better-known sites have been trashed or looted for more than a century, and public lands in the West are hard to patrol.
Rancher Waldo Wilcox, 74, spent the better part of his life keeping under wraps a string of ancient Indian settlements deep in a fold of Utah's Book Cliffs region.
His secret is only now coming to light, after Wilcox sold his Range Creek ranch for $2.5 million to the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, which transferred it to public ownership.
Archaeologists are busy surveying hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground and rock shelters -- all left practically untouched since they were abandoned more than 1,000 years ago.
Early carbon dating shows some of the occupation sites are 3,200 years old.
On Friday Wilcox added a new disclosure: surrounding lands have yielded ancient figurines or clay dolls. Wilcox knows where the bodies are buried: he said he can point to three rock-pile burial sites. Archaeologists already have recovered some ancient mummies wrapped in beaver skins and cedar strips.
"I wouldn't say I'm a hero. I just done what I believe in," Wilcox said. "The thing that worries me with all this damn publicity, how can they keep people out?"
State officials have yet to decide how to control public access to Range Creek and are using gates to keep vehicles out.
Wilcox said vandals "just destroyed" a set of three cliffside dwellings outside his former ranch on a six-mile stretch of lower Range Creek, which can be reached via a BLM road.
The dwellings "look like they were hit by mortar fire," said Utah journalist and archaeologist Jerry Spangler, who said he first visited the Wilcox ranch two summers ago.
As a group, some archaeologists concede, they have only themselves to blame for looting: Until the 1920s they paid locals to collect artifacts for museums, fueling a pot-hunting mentality.
Looting is such a problem that U.S. attorneys for Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado last month offered collectors an amnesty from prosecution to turn in their ill-gotten goods, an offer that expires in August.
As spectacular as Wilcox's ranch is proving, other hidden sites could yet be waiting for discovery across the vast public lands of the West.
Much of it could be buried. McFadden, the Grand Staircase archaeologist, said a flash flood 10 years ago eroded the bank of an arroyo to expose mud pit houses, a pueblo and vessels seen by only a few archaeologists and a group of school children.
"Every archaeologist out there is sitting on secrets," said Spangler, who counts his secrets in the hundreds.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/06/26/special_reports/science_technology/16_48_186_25_04.txt |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“The final reward of the dead - to die no more.” Nietzsche
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The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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