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Toxic Bones: The Burdens Of Discovering Human Remains In West Virginia's Abandoned And Unmarked Graves, J. William St. Clair, Robert Deal

West Virginia Law Review Online

This article pulls up and highlights a land use restriction, or financial burden, imposed upon West Virginia private real estate owners who inadvertently uncover human skeletal remains in unmarked graves on their property. In this state, those coming across human bones that historians and archaeologists eventually deem have no historical or archeological significance have a choice—pay the costs to have the bones removed and reinterred or cover the bones and use the property only as a cemetery in perpetuity. This burden becomes more acute when comparing West Virginia’s law to those of other states that require government officials, at public …