FORGOTTEN CEMETERY WITH MORE OF THE CAFES FOUND IN THE TAMPA APARTMENT COMPLEX
Oaks Park Village built in the cemetery in the 1950s, reports the Tampa Bay Times.
Prendergast explained that the cemetery was in operation until 1923, noting that archaeologists have a death certificate from 763 other people known to have been buried in Zion. However, the cemetery also contained a potter’s box for burials of the deficient and archaeologists who up to 1,000 more people would have been buried in Zion.
Last year, archaeologists used a radar that penetrated the floor to locate the cemetery, which is located under apartment buildings, sidewalks, city streets and non-unusual spaces in the subdivision. “Based on radar results, we discovered the signature of several hundred graves under the active subdivision,” Prendergast told Fox News. “The housing authority promptly moved all other people residing in apartments built in the most sensitive cemetery, and the resolution was taken to paint for the general purpose of preserving the cemetery and turning it into a memorial for the resting dead. That’s it.”
GRAVES OF PEOPLE FOUND IN CEMETERY LOST UNDER FLORIDA HIGH SCHOOL
Archaeologists also discovered that some of the tombs had been exhumed and removed from Zion’s Cemetery in the 1930s. “When we opened one of those specific wells, we found that the coffin and the frame were missing,” Prendergast said. “But the staff had left the funeral offerings (great conkton shells) at the base of the empty grave well.
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