CURRENT PROJECTS

The MGPA has surveyed burial grounds across 23 Middle Georgia counties over the past three years, concentrating first on the larger city cemeteries. Many of the burial grounds visited had the name “Artope” or that of several other monument makers carved into the gravestones. A report on this ongoing research has just been published in volume 1 of Ocmulgee The Journal of the Ocmulgee Archaeological Society. “Middle Georgia Gravestone Carvers: The Artopes of Macon” is the first article ever published analyzing the work of Macon’s preeminent 19th century gravestone- and monument-making family. While this kind of research is not new to New England and other northeastern states, it is apparently the very first study of its kind in the entire state of Georgia.