When University of Georgia officials broke ground on Baldwin Hall in December 2014, the project was almost as historic as the building itself. The circa-1938 academic hall, where some 20,000 US navy cadets once learned to fly planes during the second world war, was set to receive its first major facelift in more than half a century. To mark the occasion, UGA’s president, Jere Morehead, the Georgia house speaker, David Ralston, and other prominent state lawmakers ceremoniously tossed dirt with their red-and-black shovels onto the site.



The $8.75m construction project went according to plan for nearly a year. But on 17 November, as a crew installed the footing for a new exterior wall, a construction worker found something unexpected while tearing up the parking lot’s blacktop: part of a human skull.

The work stopped. Teams discovered two more sets of bones. Then ten. Over the course of several weeks, they identified remains from up to 27 people.

UGA officials, who expected renovations to be finished by September 2016, temporarily suspended construction to figure out what to do with the bodies at Baldwin Hall. Though the university knew of the discovery, the school didn’t formally acknowledge the incident until a spokesperson released a news statement on 11 December.



“It was a pretty unusual occurrence,” Gwynne Darden, the University of Georgia’s assistant vice-president for facilities, told the Guardian. “I was surprised. It wasn’t expected to inadvertently uncover human remains.”

The discovery occurred just on the other side of the fence from the Old Athens Cemetery, a 205-year-old plot filled with cedar and magnolia trees that once served as the college town’s primary burial grounds before the US civil war. The last known burial at the cemetery came in 1898.

According to one state estimate, the cemetery could be home to as many as 5,000 graves, including those of revolutionary war veterans, Confederate civil war soldiers, and family members of Georgia politicians. Hundreds of the graves are unmarked. Over the years, the university encroached on the six-acre plot. According to historic records, Darden said, UGA planners thought they had transferred bodies located at Baldwin Hall’s current location to the nearby Oconee Hill Cemetery. But that apparently wasn’t the case.

Could the graves at UGA belong to heroes who battled for American independence? Or soldiers who later fought to secede from the US? Perhaps.

After making their findings, UGA officials reached out to the state historic preservation office regarding what to do next. They also hired Southeastern Archaeological Services Inc, an Athens-based firm that helps clients comply with state and federal archeological regulations, to assist with the exhumation process.

According to the consultant’s visual inspection, Darden said, the human remains appeared to be of European descent and not Native American ancestry, which requires a far stricter process that’s designed to protect Indian burial sites. The state archaeologist’s office had advised the UGA officials to move the remains to another cemetery, given that the expansion project had already disturbed the graves.

As students crammed for exams on Saturday afternoon, a pair of Bobcats behind Baldwin Hall sat still at the construction site just outside the school’s anthropology department. Inside the excavated area, roped off by yellow caution tape and green chain-link fences, several people examined the red Georgia dirt and appeared to be working toward the removal the remains so the foundation can eventually be poured. Tom Gresham, co-founder of Southeastern Archaeological Services, declined to comment. The state archeologist’s office did not return multiple interview requests about what’s next for the bodies.

Darden, uncertain of how long reinterment of the remains will take, said university officials were “optimistic that this [process] doesn’t have a really long timeline”. A final destination for the graves must be determined. Once that happens, UGA officials will allow its contractor to resume the expansion and renovation of Baldwin Hall.

“We’re anxious to get back to work,” Darden said. “We also want to follow all the protocols. We’ll get back to work as soon as we’re able to do so.”