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Abandoned graveyards are his turf |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 13 June 2004 |
By RYAN TEAGUE BECKWITH, Staff Writer
John Clauser knows where the bodies are buried in North Carolina.
As an archaeologist who specializes in abandoned cemeteries, he has tromped through family burial grounds, graveyards dedicated to Confederate veterans and tiny plots alongside rural churches around the state.
When he started two decades ago, the work was obscure and the rewards limited. Most of the time, he helped amateur genealogists track down their ancestors as part of his work with the state archaeologist's office.
Now retired, Clauser continues his work as a private consultant. Most of his clients are developers who have stumbled onto a long-abandoned family cemetery while building a new shopping mall or subdivision.
On a recent weekday, Clauser stood in a grove of oak trees south of Knightdale in just such a cemetery. A neighbor had called him after finding two rows of coffin-sized depressions in the ground a few years back.
Clauser, clad in a black T-shirt, bluejeans and Red Wing cowboy boots, plunged a 1/4-inch steel probe into one of the depressions. After piercing the hard clay on the surface, the rod slipped easily past the next few inches -- a sure sign the dirt had been disturbed by a burial.
Remnants of periwinkle and holly on the ground and a row of red cedars along the perimeter confirmed his suspicion. Now the land is protected from disturbance by little orange and white flags.
Pulling the metal rod out of the grave site, Clauser, 61, says his job is not for the faint of heart.
"It takes a combination of being extremely jaded and having a good sense of humor," he says. "It's a very particular kind of person who enjoys spending more time with the dead than with the living."
Finding a vocation
Clauser never planned to be an archaeologist.
As the son of a steel mill executive in Bethlehem, Pa., he assumed as a young man that he would follow in his father's footsteps right through the door at Bethlehem Steel.
But when he was 16, his mother died after a monthslong illness. His father died six months later of a heart attack.
Already a bit of a loner, Clauser went even further adrift. He flunked out of Syracuse University, joined the Navy and served during the Vietnam War. The summer after he came back, he signed up as a laborer on an archaeological dig in Bethlehem.
Soon, he was "shovel-bumming" -- working on digs in Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. On the site of a former tannery, he decided to go back to school to study archaeology. By the time he finished, it had been nine years.
"My freshman adviser was dean of men when I graduated," Clauser notes. "He did a whole lot better than I did."
Archaeology saved Clauser in more ways than one. It gave him a purpose at a time when he was lost, he says. It turned out to be a far more stable job than anything in the steel industry, which began collapsing in the 1970s. And it gave him a new perspective on life.
"I look at things in a 200-year period," Clauser says. "If we have a week that is horrible, so what?"
For his master's project at the University of Florida at Gainesville, Clauser worked at the site of a pottery kiln outside Winston-Salem. Afterward, he was offered a job by the North Carolina state archaeologist. He started in July 1976.
Boom disturbs graves
In the early years, Clauser focused on environmental review, often traveling to oversee the restoration of an old courthouse or check on protection of a historic site.
By the mid-1980s, however, the Triangle began to boom. As developers moved farther into previously rural areas and old farms were converted into new subdivisions, construction workers began coming across more and more family cemeteries.
Under state law, an established cemetery cannot be moved without the consent of local officials and the oversight of a funeral director. But there is no clear procedure for determining the origins of a grave site.
Often, developers struggled just to find out how the law worked.
In desperation, many began calling the state archaeologist. Clauser, who often fielded the calls, was annoyed at first. Eventually, he began brushing up on cemetery law so that he could answer their questions.
"I was dragged kicking and screaming into this," he says. "I hated it in the beginning."
Soon, other state workers were referring developers to Clauser. By the time he retired last year, Clauser was one of the state's foremost experts on historical cemeteries.
"John is very skilled at the sort of hands-on end of things," says State Archaeologist Steve Claggett, his former boss. "He's really good at the practical matters of identifying cemeteries and figuring out how many graves are in there."
A new niche
When Clauser retired last year, the state archaeologist eliminated his position. Clauser sensed an opening.
Using his contacts in the archaeological field and the construction industry, he began informally advertising as a private cemetery consultant. He named his firm Of Grave Concerns and had business cards drawn up.
Now that he works as a private consultant, Clauser is more restrained in sharing information.
The developers he works with are not eager to advertise the fact that they have found an old grave site on their property. Local officials are often on edge about approving cemetery relocations, in case they upset relatives or long-time residents. And most people he talks with have a reverential respect for the places of the dead.
As for Clauser, his years of work leave no illusions about grave sites and cemeteries.
"I have seen time and time again what happens to the body, and it just doesn't matter," he says. "You can spend great quantities of money on caskets and vaults and this and that and you can't fight chemistry. Or you can just be buried in a shroud, and if it's the right kind of soil, the bones will be preserved for decades."
"The bottom line is, it's all just remains."
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1330699p-7453820c.html |
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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
“If we don't know life, how can we know death?” Confucius
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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