CRANSTON — Although the remains that were recovered from a long-forgotten pauper’s cemetery off Sockanosset Cross Road were reinterred last month at a different location, more steps must be taken to prevent a repeat of the oversights from the past.

State and city officials say that the property near the Route 37 highway embankment where the remains were found in 2006 must be marked with granite markers so the graves that remain will never be disturbed.

The City Council included that condition in the reburial permit it issued to the state Department of Transportation in February.

And while archaeologists have determined that almost all of the potter’s field that served the former State Farm, with its poorhouse, hospital and prison, rests almost entirely under Route 37, there is a sliver of the burial ground that is on commercial land owned by Carpionato Properties.

During the reburial work two weeks ago, the DOT and state historic cemetery officials expressed concern that little progress had been made in getting the markers onto the Carpionato land.

But last week, Kelly Coates, senior vice president for Carpionato, said the company is committed to cooperating with the city and the DOT, and just need extra time to perform its own due diligence.

The permit issued by the Cranston council on Feb. 7 allowed the state to rebury the remains that had been stored with a private archaeological firm since 2006, but it also stated a number of facts and conditions. It specified that the remains would be interred at another State Farm burial ground, “State Cemetery #2”, at Knight Street and Pontiac Avenue on the Warwick line. It also stipulated that the DOT install permanent granite markers to identify the portion of the old graveyard that is on the Carpionato property.

Coates said on Thursday that some additional discussion about that requirement was needed because Carpionato wanted to use its own experts and make sure that they agree with the state’s determination of where the boundary markers should be.

He said that the company has hired a surveyor from Garofalo & Associates Inc., of Providence.

He said that the surveyor, using current maps and an 1887 survey map used by the DOT, has come up with boundaries very similar to those determined by the state.

The Garofalo findings are being reviewed by the city’s Planning Department. Senior planner Lynn Furney yesterday said she is working with the surveyor on refinements and few corrections. No markers will be put in until all information has been presented to the City Council, she said, possibly at its meeting later this month.

State historic cemetery laws require that local governing bodies oversee and stipulate conditions for both the removal and the reinterment of remains from old graveyards.

DOT archaeologist Michael Hebert said that by working with the 19th-century survey map and current maps, his office determined that about six rows of graves at the northern edge of the old cemetery are on Carpionato property. Those rows would have contained about 120 bodies, he said, but it is impossible to know how many remain because of all the work and development that’s been done in the area over the past century.

According to Hebert and private archaeologists who have consulted on the project, the 3.4-acre cemetery that was the final resting place for the poor and infirm residents of the State Farm around the turn of the 20th century was apparently unmarked and forgotten when Route 37 was built in the late 1960s. Old state records show that the cemetery, which still contains more than 3,000 graves, served the State Farm from 1873 to 1918, Hebert said.

Its existence came to light in 2006 after heavy rains and drainage work near the highway embankment dislodged skeletal remains and sent them tumbling to the fringe of a parking lot at 100 Sockanosset Cross Rd. That land, now owned by Carpionato and home to an operations center for Citizens Bank, is the site of the large former Davol building.

After the accidental unearthing of the skeletal remains, it was decided that only the graves in danger of being disturbed by further erosion should be exhumed.

Last week, Councilwoman Paula McFarland said it is important that the boundaries on the Carpionato property be marked. “As elected officials we have to make sure it is properly marked so they are never disturbed again,” McFarland said. “Also it is the only decent thing to do out of respect for these poor people who passed away so long ago.”

bpoliche@projo.com