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)[(4)] "Commission" means
the Texas Historical Commission.
(7)[(5)] "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)[(6)] "Department" means
the Texas Department of State Health Services.
(9)[(7)] "Disinterment Permit"
means a permit issued by the State Registrar that authorizes the exhumation
of human remains from a grave location.
(10)[(8)] "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)[(9)] "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)[(10)] "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)[(11)] "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)[(12)] "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)[(13)] "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)[(14)] "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)[(15)] "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.
[(16)"State Registrar" means the
State Registrar for graves and cemeteries of the Texas Department
of State Health Services.]
(24)[(17)] "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.
[(18)"Unmarked grave" means a grave
that is not identifiable as a grave from the surface of the ground,
due to lack of physical markings, cemetery elements, or other indication
of the presence of a grave.]
The agency certifies that legal counsel has reviewed
the proposal and found it to be within the state agency's legal authority
to adopt.
Filed with the Office
of the Secretary of State on August 1, 2017
TRD-201702877 Mark Wolfe
Executive Director
Texas Historical Commission
Earliest possible date of adoption: September 17, 2017
For further information, please call: (512) 463-6100
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