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In all I was very excited and looking forward in starting this projects with DR. Rowe and my classmates before the semester even started, I had heard about his service learning class through Dr. Duke whom had invited Dr. Rowe to present to the class what the HCPCP was all about and the techniques that would be used. Being an Anthropology minor I was really excited and and looking forward and participating in this project. However little did I know the impact that this project has had and is still having (due to the fact that this particular project is still not complete) on the community of Hidalgo County.

In working on this project i have had first hand experience in data collection, which makes it very simple due to Kobotools being a website that is interactive with any smart phone or device that has WiFi or cellular data. In addition I was very fortunate to be working with the total station a couple of times as well as being the pole person that is used as the marker for the graves. the total station machine is part of the technology that is being used to map the cemetery in a way it is much slower because there is only a limited amount of people working on this machine that is used to map the graves. This spring semester was very fortunate because for some reason (hopefully but most likely due to global warming) for the most part we had fair weather, in the beginning the we had cool weather and towards the end the weather started to warm up. I was very pleased that the county of Hidalgo was very helpful and cooperative in their part by providing air conditioned restrooms and a ice chest of bottled water for us to hydrate,

in working with the HCPCP I have discovered that there are a vast number of graves with many different markers, unfortunately i had to witness some headstones/marker graves that were made out of PVC pipe with the epitaph written in stickers that are found on mailboxes for the mailman to deliver the bills. other graves were evident that they where made on site with cement with epitaph’s written with a stick, other headstones where made out of steel pipes, others where made with sheet metal, and many did not have a headstone at all, I have also noticed that a lot of the graves are from very early on dating from far back as the 1800’s and early 1900’s. This cemetery was originally opened in 1913 which makes me question why there are headstones dating back to the late 1800’s. It is just y opinion but it also sheds light as to why the County of Hidalgo has left this job for the university, because it is a burden that they personally they do not want to deal with, Yes the local government has helped with hydration and a place to maintain homeostasis, but I wonder because I do not know and did not bother to ask Dr. Rowe in which other ways the local government is doing to help this extensive workful project.

Furthermore in my firsthand experience in working on this project I have also become curious and more attentive to our Mexican/Hispanic culture because in working and putting effort unto this project I have noticed particular things that may be out of place. In the coming weeks in which I have been data collecting graves I have came across a technology that is probably not popular between you and me. What I am trying to explain is Witch craft or black magic. Personally after coming across one voodoo doll one day I have learned to be more attentive to my surroundings. in total I have come upon six voodoo dolls and 3 flask. all of these material have been found on, near, or around graves, the pattern was that all of the flask’s were buried next to the headstone. Unfortunately or fortunately a colleague of mine opened one of the flasks while I documented the findings on my cellular device. Inside the flask or mason jar, it was filled with sugar, cloves of garlic and seeds of Chile. Once all of the ingredients where taken out of the jar, out emerged a picture of a man, but before we can clearly take a look at he picture we had to untie the knot of a chain of paper clips that had been wrapped around the photo, once the paper clips where removed there was a photo of a middle aged man approximately in his late 40’s to early 50’s, the man was wearing a button up shirt, the man had a beer belly but his overall built was average and he also wore a dashing mustache. Later in the day towards the end of the class my classmate had mentioned how he had some knowledge on the occult and how this type of work was an “amarre” which translated to a “binding” in English, who ever had done this work on this deceased man was jealous of him or wishes that he/she most likely she wanted to be with the deceased man. Now when I saw fortunately i meant it because if we had not opened the mason jar we would not have figured out who had been buried there, because the marker had no name, on the picture was also some dates, and we are assuming that it was the date of his birth and death, however nothing is certain,

overall I am more than elated that I have participated in this project and I hope I am there when it is finally finished, I know this will certainly not be tomorrow, but I am glad that i participated and looking back I am proud to say to my offspring or grandchildren that I was part of Dr. Rowe’s students that helped map the HCPCP graves and helped reunited many families with their deceased loved ones.

Going into this class, I wasn’t entirely sure what I had signed up for. I was a little intimidated by the prospect of working in public archaeology because I was somewhat scared I would like it. All I knew about the class was that it was largely based off campus and would demand different work from me than a standard classroom setting would. As far as the course goes, it is exactly what I had always hoped to do in this region and so much more. I think I am mostly surprised that throughout the course of this semester, I heard no mention of the fact that a graduate student from TPA was actually the person who marked and restored a great part of the Restlawn cemetery across the way from the Hidalgo County Public Cemetery. I first heard about this student’s work back in 2013 when I decided to purchase a newspaper one July morning. I remember setting my heart on doing work like this in the future, and it was a moment I knew solidified my interest in anthropology in general. Fast forward to the end of this semester, and I got to experience some of that same work that this student put into the restoration of Restlawn Cemetery.

For example, some of the methods I got to use for the restoration of the Hidalgo County records of the Public Cemetery were online forms, GPS mapping, and spreadsheet/data processing. The online form turned out to be pretty convenient for the purpose of taking in data for the individual plots. The practicality of recording grave marker details via our phone was probably what lead to what I assume is an exponential improvement in input efficacy. I appreciate that the familiarity of our phone usage could help us record the grave measurements, marker conditions, inscriptions, and document the presence of grave offerings. From what I can recall, the majority of the gravestones were made of concrete/cement or a combination of materials where the former made up the majority of the marker. As I collected a lot this data, I anticipated all of the statistics that could be derived from our collective work. Being out there, rain or shine, felt pretty rewarding once the semester came to a close and we looked back on the hundreds of graves we put on the map this spring.

Another collection/recording method I got to work with this semester was the total station. Initially, I was taught by my classmate how to use it from the recording tripod, but I really enjoyed working at both ends of the station. One work day I got to record the points from the scanner tripod, and the other day I worked from the prism, or point of interest. It was obvious that setting up the prism required more than just moving it around the four corners of each plot. The days that obstacles stood in the way of mapping the coordinates from the total station, we would move trees to get our point read. This would make for some questionable bending of branches and jumping around, but all in all, I look forward to the results on our cartography medium. Although the results are not complete, I still would like to browse the map for future reference and look forward to connecting the located grave plots with the information we have compiled into spreadsheets.

Although I only worked with spreadsheets once throughout this semester, I look forward to possibly working further with this data in the future. I think that, although it was just one job, I learned a lot about doing work efficiently. Data cleanup proved to be one of the most fun aspects of this course. Analyzing what is left to clean up after inputting data into our forms told me that the system we have as of now definitely has room for improvements. This was apparent in the repetition of data sets and the missing data sets that failed to go through the forms. I hope to continue working on the data. finding the demographics of the cemetery, finding potential correlations and the implications for the community. I certainly hope I get to learn what this can reveal about the history of this cemetery and its business–knowing it used to be called a pauper cemetery already says so much to us anthropology students, but I would like it if it were as obvious to the community members. What was immediately apparent to me was the variation in attention and care that was put into the maintenance of the separate cemeteries on this square of land, and I feel like I speak for a good portion of my classmates when I say that it’s something we hope changes in the future. I think ultimately releasing or sharing these statistics can move more people to involve themselves in this public archaeology project, and will increase the likelihood of the change we hope the community makes in the preservation of this historic cemetery.

Something I didn’t get much of an opportunity to work on was dealing with the public eye or publicity for the project. The only family member to come my way while we were working on recording graves was a woman I had to redirect to Dr. Rowe because it was our first day out and I had yet to develop dialogue for what I was actually doing out there. In inclusion to that, I felt like I hadn’t contributed enough to the project, at least not as much as my veteran peers, to have any authority in speaking to the inquirer. What I was able to do was a poster presentation on the course as a service learning class. I had worked with Engaged Scholars before, and I must say I greatly enjoyed working with them once again for this group effort. It felt really great to hear the director of the program’s input on the HCPCP project and it was a privilege to represent Dr. Rowe’s work for that afternoon.

Any future direction for me in regards to this project looks like a continuance of my volunteering and potential re-enrollment in the class for the coming semester. For the course itself, I know Dr. Rowe and future volunteers for the project, myself included, would greatly enjoy use of the Ground Penetrating Radar for identifying unmarked graves and an opportunity to have the human remains detection dogs revisit. The ultimate goal of creating a permanent public record for Hidalgo County is within reach. I don’t doubt that the enjoyability and learning opportunity of this course could lead to it possibly being picked up in the future with other cemeteries. The hands-on archaeological experience within the RGV and affordability of the course as an option in our degree curriculum made the course all the more exciting. In the end, I know that what I didn’t get to experience this semester, I am sure I will get to see if I stick around until this project’s end.

This is my second time taking this class, and it has been an adventure. The first semester I took the class I wasn’t to sure what it was about. I remember being in Dr. Dukes class, and he was letting us know about the new class that was going to open for the fall. I was very excited the first day of class. I was just beyond excited, and I felt very comfortable in the environment I was in. I felt like everyone in the class was on the same page as me. It was nice because it was the first time the class was being taught and we were all learning as the time went by. I couldn’t picture the cemetery we were going to be doing the project in, i just knew that it was old, and was a little forgotten by the county. The first thing that grabbed my attention was that a lot of the graves were like the ones from Mexico. Some were colorful and full of offerings, and others were forgotten and broken. I was a little intimidating with the data collection, especially the area where we had to distinguished what time of stone the grave was, but after practicing a couple of times I was able to find it a little bit easier.  The use of electronics made it so much easier because the website did the job for you, the only thing we were doing was inputting the information, instead of carrying a notebook and writing everything down. The total station was more advance for me to get comfortable using it. It was a little to much high tech for me, so I concentrated more on data collecting. The weather during the first semester of the course was extremely hot. Good thing we were told to bring specific things to the cemetery in order to stay hydrated and protected from the sun. We found a variety of Santeria objects that seem to be offerings to graves or just random people going to the cemetery and practicing their rituals. While I was collecting data from a child grave, I saw what seemed to be a letter buried to the side of the grave. I was very eager to grab it and try to to see what it was but I did not have the heart to invade their privacy, but what I also notice was that that grave had a picture of the deceased child on the head stone. It said that the baby had passed away in the 80’s, but the picture had the printed date on the back that said it was printed in 2013? I found that very interesting, and I was eager to know why? We also found a couple of wax balls hanging from the trees that were wrapped in yarn as well. We weren’t to sure why those were there. The first semester consisted of learning the process of doing data collection and flagging all the graves as well. The majority were color coded, unless for the ones that were skipped. We also learned to  map the graves with the use of total station. When we had the detective dogs come down from California was awesome. We were able to  see how they did their work on identifying areas were might have a possibility of human remains, but due to the hot weather they got pretty exhausted, but they were still able to marked 20 more graves. It was an awesome start to the course, and a lot was learned during that time. I enjoyed the class so much that I decided to take it for my last semester as an undergraduate student. This time I felt like we knew there was a lot more to the class than just data collection. We were able to almost finish data collecting more or less of 1,020 graves. I felt more confident this next time because I had practice from the previous semester, and I was able to help the new students of the course.  I notice that there was a lot of children buried, and many from the same year, I also found a couple of graves that were from the 1800’s, which was very exciting because most of them were in great shape. We were able to see a lot more  Santeria objects and dolls as well. The highlight of the semester for me was when I was able to witness when a family was able to find their lost loves grave with the help of Dr. Rowe. This family had been looking for their love one for about 50 years, and they were finally able to find her. It was amazing to see how this project will help a lot of the community, and at the same time it will help teach the community about how much history a cemetery has. My advice for the up coming class would be to be prepared for the heat, and make sure to be open minded to things. There is so much to learn from this project, and it would be a great loss if you didn’t get any knowledge from it. I think that it would be nice to have a couple of students concentrating in finding documents based on the deceased, and we might get a better insight on what was going on around the times of their deaths. It might help gain more history based on cemetery. Others can be doing corrections on the data collection,  and another group can be doing the mapping at the cemetery. They can plan an alternating system so everyone would get a chance to experiment the areas.I have learned so much from this class, that it makes me sad that I wont be able to take it next semester, but it brings me joy because I might get the opportunity to take it as a graduate student. It was a great opportunity, and this was one of my wishes to be part of before I graduated, to be able to get the hands on experience.  I look forward for the event that will take place on El Dia De Los Muertos, and to the new adventure that awaits.