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By Harriette Halepis

About one year ago (September 11, 2008), construction crews in Bismarck, Australia, were surprised to find numerous unmarked graves after breaking land in order to build a new water storage tank. After a bit of ground was uncovered, parts of older pine boxes were suddenly exposed. Once the crews discovered that they were, in fact, digging inside of a graveyard, construction was stopped. At that time, the city of Bismarck decided to relocate the graves to a modern day cemetery using GPS trackers. This process proved to be effective, and it has been used again since then.

With all of the modern construction that occurs across the world almost every single day, construction crews are bound to run into a few grave sites. Humans have been buried underground since the beginning of mankind, which may mean that nearly every inch of earth was once a burial site. While some of these spots have been well marked and are noticeable today. Other spots have long since disappeared from public view. This often means that no record of the site (or of those buried there) exists.

It is not uncommon for a construction crew to come across a gravesite while digging up land for a new development. In fact, it is far more common than one might think. While apparent gravesites are avoided at all costs, those that are not so apparent cannot be avoided. Further, most state laws only protect those sites that are clearly marked. While moving graves from one piece of land to another might seem rather unethical, the fact of the matter is that many of these land plots are prime real estate.

This conundrum has raised the question: what is to be done with all of those unmarked graves? Using the original Bismarck case as a guide, cities and crews alike have found that the best way to place bodies back into original graves is with a GPS tracker. Using these trackers, those that were originally buried can be returned to their former positions.

Alternately, those that must be moved to a new gravesite can be kept track of using a GPS tracker. While GPS systems are used for a number of things these days, they can also be used to keep track of the deceased. Thanks to GPS trackers, those that have died a long time ago can be rightfully returned to their original resting spots – even if their eternal slumber was disturbed by modern machinery for a moment or two.