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TITLE 13CULTURAL RESOURCES
PART 2TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
CHAPTER 22CEMETERIES
RULE §22.1Definitions

The following words and terms, when used in this chapter, shall have the following meanings unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.

  (1) "Abandoned cemetery" means a non-perpetual care cemetery containing one or more graves and possessing cemetery elements for which no cemetery organization exists and which is not otherwise maintained by any caretakers. It may or may not be recorded in deed records of the county in which it lies.

  (2) "Antiquities Permit" means a permit issued by the Texas Historical Commission under the jurisdiction of the Antiquities Code of Texas, Natural Resources Code ch. 191.

  (3) "Atlas" means the Texas Historic Sites Atlas which is a cultural resource database that is maintained by the Commission and contains historic properties.

  (4) "Burials" and "Burial pits" mean marked and unmarked locales set aside for a human burial or burials purposes. Burials and burial pits may contain the remains of one or more individuals located in a common grave in a locale. The site area encompasses the human remains present and also may contain gravestones, markers, containers, coverings, garments, vessels, tools, and other grave objects which may be present. or could be evidenced by the presence of depressions, pit feature stains, or other archeological evidence.

  (5) "Cemetery" means a place that is used or intended to be used for interment, and includes a graveyard, burial park, unknown cemetery, abandoned cemetery, mausoleum, or any other area containing one or more graves or unidentified graves.

  (6) "Commission" means the Texas Historical Commission.

  (7) "Declaration of Dedication" means a notarized statement submitted to the appropriate county clerk's office, in which the state verifies and acknowledges that the named cemetery contains human burials at least 50 years old.

  (8) "Department" means the Texas Department of State Health Services.

  (9) "Disinterment Permit" means a permit issued by the State Registrar that authorizes the exhumation of human remains from a grave location.

  (10) "Family cemetery" means a cemetery containing members of a single family or kinship group, usually located on land belonging to the family or occupied by the family when established.

  (11) "Funerary objects" means physical objects associated with a burial, such as a casket, whether whole or deteriorated into pieces, personal effects, ceremonial objects, and any other objects interred with human remains.

  (12) "Grave" means a space of ground that contains interred human remains or is in a burial park and this is used or intended to be used for interment of human remains in the ground.

  (13) "Identified grave" means a grave that is marked with name of the individual interred in the grave or for which there is other evidence of the name of the individual interred in the grave.

  (14) "Interment" means the permanent disposition of human remains by entombment, burial, or placement in a niche, but does not include the location of displaced or disarticulated human remains.

  (15) "Historic cemetery" means a cemetery with at least one grave that is 50 years old or older.

  (16) "Human remains" means the body of a decedent.

  (17) "Marked grave" means a grave that has some physical object or objects identifying it as a grave, including a headstone, wooden or metal marker, arrangement of field stones, plantings, or other such indicia, whether or not the individual in the grave is identified.

  (18) "Nonperpetual care cemetery" means a cemetery that is not a perpetual care cemetery.

  (19) "Perpetual care" or "endowment care" means the maintenance, repair, and care of all places in the cemetery.

  (20) "Perpetual care cemetery" or "endowment care cemetery" means a cemetery for the benefit of which a perpetual care trust fund is established as provided by Chapter 712.

  (21) "Physical anthropologist" means an individual who has a graduate degree in anthropology or archaeology with a concentration of study in the assessment of human skeletal remains. This person must be qualified to obtain measurements of the skeleton and obtain a biological profile, including sex, age, ancestry, stature, and anomalous pathological and traumatic conditions.

  (22) "Professional archeologist" means an individual who has a degree in anthropology, archeology, or a closely related field if that degree also included formal training in archeological field methods, research, and site interpretation, and who conducts archeological investigations as a vocation.

  (23) "Unidentified grave" means a grave that is not marked in a manner that provides the identity of the interment.

  (24) "Unknown cemetery" means an abandoned cemetery evidenced by the presence of marked or unmarked graves that does not appear on a map or in deed records.

  (25) "Unverified cemetery" means a location having some evidence of human burial interments, but in which the presence of one or more unmarked graves has not been verified by a person described by §711.0105(a) of the Health and Safety Code of Texas or by the commission.

  (26) "Verified cemetery" means the location of a human burial interment or interments as verified by the commission.


Source Note: The provisions of this §22.1 adopted to be effective May 20, 2010, 35 TexReg 3809; amended to be effective January 2, 2018, 42 TexReg 7684

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