State archaeologist flooded with cemetery reviews

State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson was put to the test earlier this year when he received a call from a woman buying a cabin in Clear Lake, Minn., who suspected there was an Indian burial mound in her back yard. Days later, the phone rang with the reported discovery of three infant graves in Crow Wing County.

And then there were the skeletal remains stumbled upon by a construction crew in Hastings last month. Anfinson was brought in on that as well.

"It's become a huge aspect of what I do as the state archaeologist, is deciding what to do with these burials," Anfinson said. "It's probably a third of my time or more; it's the most common call I get."

Although the issues raised in those calls were relatively minor, they created enough work to pull him away from his other duties as the state's chief archaeologist.

Particularly at a time of shrinking budgets, the Office of the State Archaeologist's two-person operation has been left gasping to keep up with the growing number of unmarked burial sites being uncovered by fast-paced development.

"We're coping. I just have to triage. I just have to say, if you're curious whether there's a burial mound on your land and you want me to tell you yes or no, you're just going to have to wait; first I have to go to where the bulldozers are heading," he said.

Whether Anfinson or his assistant can respond to one of the 300 "site inventory forms" his office receives each year often depends on the location of the site. In some cases, as with the bones found in Hastings in August — probably belonging to an early settler — he defers to a group of archaeologists from Hamline University. But, even then, he followed the site's excavation closely. When local authorities wondered whether to give a Christian burial to the remains of the unidentified woman, Anfinson intervened.

Exactly how much he should be taking on "isn't not spelled out as clearly as it could be in state law," Cemetery records are stored in many county recorders' offices, but "no entity in the state keeps track of burials in general."

Instead, the task of mapping all the state's cemeteries falls to him.

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council handles most calls involving the state's 12,000 known burial mounds, said Anfinson, who serves on advisory panels for the Three Rivers Park District and Dakota County parks.

In between projects, Anfinson said he is working with the state Department of Transportation to build a comprehensive database of detailed information on cemeteries and burial mounds "to make it easier for counties and cities to solve the problem themselves before they even need to call me" — a task that in other states would be left to a full-time burial archaeologist.

By his conservative estimate, there are about 10,000 cemeteries in the state, half of which, he says, don't show up on any maps. Undetected Indian burial mounds also number in the thousands, he said.