Im writing a story aout this and was hoping I could find the common way they estimate how many bodies are in a cemetaryso i could se it in my story. Any help isuseful, but please be serious!
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Unless it is a historically recent cemetery with a continuous record of management, there is no way to tell how many people are buried there and where they are located. I’ve worked on both archaeology sites and construction sites that were on areas that had been supposedly cleared of burials and in every case we turned up coffins and skeletons, many in places outside what were understood to be the cemetery boundaries and often doubled up, as in buried on top of each other.
I can’t think of any reason there would be for anyone to “estimate” how many bodies are in a graveyard. What would be the point of such a census? So there is no “way they estimate” other than to count headstones, markers and tombs. Many large graveyards have a “potters’ field” section where indigent people and unidentified strangers are buried without markers. No way to know how many are in there
Note if you are writing this story, please make sure you spell cemetery correctly. There is no “a”.
In well cared for cemeteries the plots are numbered and located on a grid pattern. In old ones you have to count the number of headstones. However I once helped clean one that had multiple burials in one grave with just a large plain white cross with no names. Church records helped but many were lost because a fire destroyed the wooden crosses they had and records were poorly kept. We estimated where those would have been by examining various mounds where vegetation was very lush, having grown on a dead body or where there were depressions where graves may have sunk, also based on vegetation growth.
Source(s): Archaeology Degree and many years of exploring graveyards.