Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Using Specialized Dogs to Find Historic Burials - Ep 189
450 Plays3 years ago
Zach Overfield joins us to talk about a recent project he was involved with in Louisiana with his employer, HDR. They were tasked with identifying whether culture resources exist, including an historic cemetery, near a railroad bridge. Through a combination of cadaver dogs and GPR they were able to get the job done. Find out how on this episode.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/archaeotech/189
Links
Contact
- Chris Webster
- Twitter: @archeowebby
- Email: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Paul Zimmerman
- Twitter: @lugal
- Email: paul@lugal.com
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and APN Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, this is Chris Webster, founder of the APN and I just want to thank you for downloading this episode. Please consider becoming a member of the APN if you're not already and helping us make more great shows and get them out to the world. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash members or click the link in the show notes. On to the show. You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archeotech Podcast, Episode 189. I'm your host, Chris Webster. My co-host, Paul Zimmerman, is off in the Middle East again. Today we discuss using human remains, sensing dogs, and other subsurface techniques to find a historic cemetery in Louisiana with Zach Overfield from HDR. Let's get to it.
00:00:45
Speaker
All right, welcome to the show, everybody. Today, it is just me. Paul is out in the Middle East doing some fantastic things, and I'm sure he will come on and tell us all about it when he gets back
Using Dogs in Archaeological Techniques
00:00:56
Speaker
in a few weeks. So we can look forward to that probably later in November. This is our first new episode in a little while. We had a little break over October, and that helped us kind of retool some of the things we're doing at the RKLG Podcast Network.
00:01:08
Speaker
and for all the other shows and now we're back at it. So with that, we're going to start with an interview and I'd like to welcome Zach Overfield from HDR. Zach, how's it going? Pretty good, Chris. Really excited to be here.
00:01:24
Speaker
Awesome. I was actually approached by your company to talk about this project that we're going to talk about, which I think is a first for definitely the Archaeotech Podcast and probably all of the Archaeology Podcast Network. First off, I'd just like to say it's fantastic that that's happened because it's always been somewhat of a goal of mine with the Archaeology Podcast Network since I founded it to
00:01:46
Speaker
be an outlet for CRM companies to talk about these projects outside of like a paper that, let's be honest, very few people are actually going to read and a CRM report, which even fewer people are going to read. And it's just, you know, these cool things, they just never get out there in the way that we would like it. So, you know, our several thousand listeners a month would be happy to hear what you have to say. Yeah, well, I'm excited to hear that. I'm glad to hear that HDR is the first and I hope other companies do the same thing because, you know,
00:02:15
Speaker
I agree, you know, so much of what we do doesn't go beyond, you know, a small group of professionals. And sometimes it's dubious whether even our clients, you know, read the reports. So I think it's really important for archaeologists to be getting out and trying to disseminate our work to a larger audience and, you know, hopefully just make what we do more accessible in general.
CRM Project in Louisiana
00:02:38
Speaker
And that's what I love so much about, about your podcast. Yeah.
00:02:41
Speaker
There's a lot of great information and it's easy to get to, which is pretty much the opposite from most archaeological technical work. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, for clients, it's always make sure that executive summary is real good because they'll probably read that. Exactly. The first few paragraphs look real sharp. Exactly, exactly.
00:03:04
Speaker
All right. Well, let's just set the stage here. So you're working in Louisiana. Tell us a little bit about this project. How did it come about? This is a CRM project. So what prompted this, this action, the section one of six action, and then we'll get into what it is a little bit. Yeah. So I just recently rejoined HDR like a little over a year ago and day three of like onboarding. I haven't even finished like my corporate training yet. I got pulled into this, this project, you know, I've,
00:03:31
Speaker
done some cemetery investigations in my career. And, you know, this was kind of had just been spooling up. And it's a it's for a freight rail project just upriver from New Orleans near a small town called Norco, Louisiana.
00:03:46
Speaker
And it's located within the Bonacrae spillway, which is a very large Corps of Engineers, uh, civil works projects, you know, for flood control from the Mississippi until Lake Pontchartrain and Canadian national, our client who in this area operates is Illinois central railroad. This bridge, this wooden trestle bridge, you know, needed to be rebuilt because dated to the 1930s. So one, we had to, you know, architectural, our architectural historians had to assess whether or not the bridge itself was.
00:04:14
Speaker
a historic property. But during the early project planning phases, it wasn't assumed that a lot of archeology would have to be done because in the 80s, the Corps had had this area surveyed extensively.
Challenges in Locating Historic Cemetery
00:04:28
Speaker
And so pretty much 100% of it was covered by some level of effort in the past. And then they've been actively sand mining in this spillway. And they're still doing it. They are even doing it when we are out there eventually doing the field work.
00:04:42
Speaker
And so the early environmental project manager and client thinking was that the archeology wasn't going to be a concern and it was going to be a pretty smooth environmental permitting process. That ended up not being the case. During the core pre-application meeting, core archeologists very casually just brought up that
00:05:06
Speaker
you know, it's come to his attention that there may be a union cemetery in the spillway and potentially, you know, within the project area. Oh, no big deal. No big deal. Um, and this was before this, this had happened like soon, just a little bit before I started. And so I basically got pulled into call number two with the core where they were already kind of expecting a scope of work from us and our, and our research design. But you know, there was still a need for like a lot of clarification on
00:05:36
Speaker
HDR's end on like, okay, where's this information coming from? Because our due diligence and desktop research hadn't resulted in identifying anything like that. But basically what he said was that, you know, just local information had been passed to him that during that early work, when the spillway was being surveyed, that there was a gentleman who had passed along some oral history.
00:06:06
Speaker
And this this man was in his late 80s and he was passing along something his grandfather had told him as a child. OK. Was that there was a union cemetery near the the bridge, the CN Bridge. And this was information he was relaying. You know, this was he was recounting it in the 80s for something that had transpired in his childhood, you know, decades before that. And then there was one historic photograph of just like anonymous looking looking cemetery.
00:06:36
Speaker
But on the back, it had scrawled in pencil, Bonacrae Sem. Now, there are several cemeteries in what is today the Bonacrae spillway. So whether or not this photograph is of this Union Cemetery is suspect and still the present day, I'm pretty unsure that that's a photo of this cemetery. Sure.
00:06:56
Speaker
because a lot of archival research we ended up doing, it seems like the cemetery didn't have headstones. And this photograph clearly is of a cemetery with headstones. So seems suspect. So, you know, we started basically at that point, we were told by the Corps that we'd have to do an archaeological investigation. And so, you know, we kind of started that that usual process and we were pulling together a plan to do mechanical prospection was kind of plan one.
00:07:26
Speaker
So that's basically kind of how things kicked off, starting as a standard 106 process. And there's also a lot of other environmental permitting needed because we were operating in the spillway. And in this part of Louisiana, get permits from the Office of Coastal Management.
00:07:47
Speaker
Even to just to dig a hole in the spillway, you need a permit from the from the core, whether it's archaeology or not. Sure.
Innovative Detection Methods
00:07:55
Speaker
Civil works project. So it's section section 408, you know, the real estate action and all that, all that stuff.
00:08:03
Speaker
I mean, back up a little bit. Did the bridge end up being historic itself? Great question. So just north, also in the spillway, closer to Lake Pontchartrain is an even longer 1930s wooden trestle bridge that HDR was in Canadian. It's also Canadian National Bridge. And so HDR had just been working with Canadian National on that bridge.
00:08:25
Speaker
And that one was evaluated as eligible as basically a tremendous engineering feat for the time. Sure. Just a revolutionized 1930s wooden trestle bridge engineering that's crossing basically, you know, this massive, this massive area. So basically because of that bridge, because that bridge was eligible, this one is much smaller. So our analysis of the core ended up in the ship ended up agreeing with that.
00:08:52
Speaker
Basically this one, you know, in light of the other one, basically this one being much shorter and pretty redundant with the other one, not eligible. It was constructed later. So this much longer one constructed first. That's the important one. This one constructed later.
00:09:09
Speaker
is determined not eligible. Clearly, I'm not an architectural historian, but I think that probably hits the nail on the head. I'm actually a little curious about the other bridge, too. Did they just kind of beef that one up a little bit and restore it a little? Or if it's still in use and getting old, you've got to do something with it.
00:09:30
Speaker
No. So actually, so like you said, so, I mean, these are quite old, almost a hundred year old bridges, right? And they were in frequent use with very heavy freight trains crossing them. You know, that one still had to be reconstructed. So it did, you know, there was a, an MOA developed.
00:09:48
Speaker
there was, you know, mitigation for it. So interpretive signage primarily in addition to like your hair documentation. Sure. So on the spillway, there will be, they haven't been installed yet, but they've been created like this, that bridge, the new bridge for that project is like currently in construction and like wrapping up, you know, this year. So there'll be some interpretive signage installed and there was all the documentation done
00:10:18
Speaker
But yeah, that one is being deconstructed and rebuilt. OK, well, that's pretty cool. All right, so we've got a little bit of the backstory now. Now on to the archaeology of the whole thing. In the write up that you sent us, it was mentioned that a suggestion was made in order to help find the cemetery to basically just dig up the whole thing, right? I mean, archaeologists have shovels and they love to use them. So you guys didn't end up doing that. But what was the discussion around
00:10:46
Speaker
why you didn't end up doing that, you know, why, why a full scale excavation didn't initially takes place or, or really other, other testing and shovel testing as well, presumably would happen before that. But yeah. Well, yeah. So from a shovel testing standpoint,
00:11:02
Speaker
There's just no way you could reach, you know, any, any sort of deposit. So just tell you, you know, yeah, one going to be too deep and two, you're just in this. So we're in the spill, the spillway, which is like an extensive wetland environment, you know, in south, just up river from new Orleans. So water table was a major concern for sure. For a number of reasons, but basically, you know, the first thing, you know, we got the requirement from the core.
00:11:31
Speaker
And we put together like a pretty standard sample, like mechanical scraping sample. And we were going to look at just a portion of the project area. And it was still like a pretty, pretty large scale effort. You know, our, the costs for us, you know, for the sample were in, was in the six figures. And obviously the client was having a lot of heartburn about, about that. But, you know, what, what must be done must be done.
00:11:59
Speaker
And so, you know, my initial thinking was it was a pretty commiserate sample in regards to just like the potential impacts because these wooden trestle bridges, you know, the new bridge, the footprint of the, the pilings is super minimal. I mean, the total like project area subsurface impact was like 0.01 acres because just added, just cumulatively adding up just the footprint of the pilings.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah.
Project Findings and Future of Detection Dogs
00:12:27
Speaker
And they're, they're driven pile, right? So a giant machine goes along just driving these straight into the ground so that there, there's not large scale excavation and the sampling strategy that we are proposing was going to be way more excavation than even the project, you know? Yeah. So I was like, so it seemed reasonable to me. I submitted it to the core core, pass it along to Louisiana division of archeology.
00:12:51
Speaker
And the state archeologists felt that because of the Louisiana unmarked historic burials law, that really the entire project needed to be excavated because under that state level law, you know, no new development, you know, can be done on top of a cemetery. So it really kind of changed. Well, their perspective is like, you know, they understood how kind of minimal the footprint was, but just under Louisiana state law,
00:13:20
Speaker
to protect cemeteries, you know, their initial feeling was that you need to, we need to scrape it all. And then, you know, that was gonna, you know, at a minimum, like quadruple the cost of what we had already proposed, you know, at a minimum. And that's not even taking the account, like we would need to have the contractor
00:13:40
Speaker
doing the trenching was going to have to have a significant presence and also lots of shoring available because we're like I was saying in the environment we were operating in with a shallow water table. And we'd be talking about really unstable soils that flood, you know, pretty quickly and need to be pumped out to even examine the trench profiles for burial shafts. So it seemed like a logistics nightmare from Jump Street.
00:14:08
Speaker
And, you know, freight railroad clients are extremely safety conscious. And so, you know, they, they were just kind of really unsure that this could really even be, be done in a manner that they would find safe. And, you know, in addition to our costs, which just for the sample, we're already six figures, the con like the contractors costs, which was going to be a self consultant directly to the, to the client, to our client.
00:14:35
Speaker
was also considerable. And so just like basically quadrupling that amount of work or more was pretty eye popping for them. So, you know, we were going back and forth with like the level of effort with the division of archeology. And, you know, it seemed like we could maybe scale it back a little bit and not do a hundred percent and really just like hone in on the new, the new piling locations or, or at least
00:15:04
Speaker
scale it back some, but it was still going to be a pretty dramatic expansion of what we initially proposed and logistically challenging. So during that time, when we were just kind of looking for alternatives or trying to adjust our scope, you know, I've been made aware of, you know, some work that had been done primarily in academic circles, using the historic human remains detection dogs and other remote sensing techniques to
00:15:34
Speaker
to look for, for burials and, you know, I just like a passing awareness of it, but right around the time that we were going back and forth on the scope with, uh, with the core and the division of archeology, a Dr. Ben Alexander with Texas state, actually not far from where you're posted up right now in Austin was giving a present, a virtual presentation to the North Texas archeological society, which I virtually attended.
00:16:02
Speaker
talking about these
APN Membership and Resources
00:16:03
Speaker
applications in archaeology and work that he had done for TexDOT for Section 106 and Antiquities Code of Texas compliance. And during his presentation, I interrupted like several times asking questions. So we could ask questions during, so I did.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I was like, do you think they would work in a really wet environment, potentially, you know, upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana? And, you know, the more we got into the details, I was like, this seems like a viable approach to me. So I was like texting like the project manager, like while I was still like watching this presentation. And it ended up talking to Dr. Alexander immediately after the presentation and
00:16:47
Speaker
It seemed like, you know, something he was worth, you know, interested in exploring because he was looking to get his, his specially trained dogs into some different environments, you know, and really get some additional visibility like for this work. And I was like, all right, we'll start, start exploring this. And he had some other contacts like in this, in this business, in the dog business. So I started getting the ball rolling with the agencies, which in and of itself was a pretty big,
00:17:17
Speaker
feet to get approval from the agencies. Right. Okay. Well, that sounds like a good point to take a break and we'll come back and see how that went and the other subsurface sensing equipment that you used to actually find or not find as the case may be this, uh, this cemetery. So let's do that on the other side of the break back in a minute.
00:17:42
Speaker
It's Chris Webster again. If you haven't checked out our new parent website, CulturoMedia.com, then please do. Culturo is spelled K-U-L-T-U-R-O, and it's where we promote all of our live events. We've got one coming up in November. Check it out over at Culturo when it gets posted. If it's already happened and you're hearing this, then as a member, you can go to your member pages and see the event recording. Our live events are always free, but you have to show up during the event to see it. So that's CulturoMedia.com for all our live events and more. CulturoMedia.com.
00:18:17
Speaker
Chris Webster here, founder of the APN and host of several shows. I just wanted to let you know about our membership program and what it offers. Members of the APN get, for just $7.99 a month or cheaper if you pay for the year, ad-free episodes so you don't have to listen to me on the breaks, membership in our Slack team so you can continue the conversation with hosts and other members, and exclusive access to any of our live event recordings. Live events are always free, but you only get to watch the recording if you're a member.
00:18:44
Speaker
So, head over to arcpodnet.com slash members for more info and to become a member. Our podcasts are always free, but this is just a little something extra and it really helps us out. That's arcpodnet.com slash members.
00:19:03
Speaker
This is Chris Webster at the APN. I'm also a project manager for several industries. I wouldn't be able to keep on track with really anything if it wasn't for Motion. With Motion, I just say what I need to do, how long I think it will take, what sort of priority I think it has, and Motion builds my day for me. I believe in building breaks because, let's be honest, it's hard to remember to stop to eat lunch sometimes. So head over to arcpodnet.com slash Motion for a free trial and a discount if you sign up. You'll kick back a small amount to the APN if you do. That's arcpodnet.com slash Motion.
00:19:35
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 189. And I'm talking to Zach Overfield about the project. He was on with HDR, where working try to find the existence or non-existence of potentially a Civil War era cemetery. So at the end of the last segment, you mentioned hearing about these cadaver dogs, as I've come to know them. We've actually done episodes with the
00:20:00
Speaker
I can't remember if it was on this show or another show on the APN, but definitely talk to some of the people that operate a cadaver dog company out of California. They've been on fires and archeological projects and all kinds of stuff. I remember crazy things these dogs can find, right? I remember one of the big fires in California, I think the Paradise Fire.
00:20:21
Speaker
I think they called that the campfire, but Paradise, California burned down and somebody contacted them because they had sitting on the mantle of their house, which literally burned to the ground. I mean, there was nothing left of this house. It just raged through their big house, burned completely to the ground. But the ashes of one of their deceased parents was sitting on the mantle of the fireplace. And there was a good foot thick of ash just where the house used to be. And the cadaver dogs found the ashes of the, uh,
00:20:50
Speaker
person. I couldn't even believe it. I didn't know they could find ashes. I know they could find remains. And that has definitely an odor that dogs can pick up, but ashes, right? So. Well, you know, with these dogs, it goes even beyond ashes, right? Because with ashes, at least there's something like physical there. These dogs.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah. And the wise, why I say historical human remains detection dogs and like differentiate that from, from like, like broader category of cadaver dogs is because these dogs that we are working with and the dogs, you know, that are really built for this work are specifically trained to identify human remains that are 75 years or older. And really what they're trained on is to identify the odor of human decomposition, right? They're looking for areas where, where human remains were,
00:21:36
Speaker
So there doesn't necessarily have to be anything left of the body. So, you know, with ashes, like, you know, I think I could certainly believe that because they, at least there's something there, but these dogs, you know, confined.
00:21:51
Speaker
or basically everything else is decomposed away, and there might be nothing physical left of the human body, and they can also differentiate between humans and other mammals, which still blows my mind, and we don't actually 100% understand how they do that, even.
00:22:09
Speaker
Wow, that's just really interesting. And yeah, so these dogs, you know, I started talking to Ben Alexander and then ended up working with him and Paul Martin of Martin Archaeology Consulting, who is working on his dissertation right now on this very topic and has his own trained dog and other remote sensing equipment. And so, you know, we relied
00:22:36
Speaker
pretty, pretty heavily on, on Paul and Ben for their expert guidance. And they're like I said, their dog, you know, Ben has trained, he's basically the, uh, the dog trainer at, uh, Texas state for their fact, the forensic anthropology center. Okay.
00:22:55
Speaker
So he's trained lots of different cadaver dogs. And this dog in particular that we worked with, her name was Rip. OK. And he's been trained from a puppy to find, you know, old human remains and read barely their fragments. And and so and same thing with Paul's dog. So one thing that Ben really stresses is that just, you know, not all not all dogs
00:23:23
Speaker
necessarily cut out for this work in that each cadaver dogs have different strengths and some dogs are much better at finding remains on the surface, right? Sure. But some dogs are uniquely talented in finding just like human scent or deeply buried.
00:23:38
Speaker
remains. And they've also had success identifying remains that are underwater. So they take these dogs on boats, on boats. That's not combination. Yeah, through a combination of the dogs and you know, marine remote sensing techniques have been able to identify human remains. So their capability is truly incredible. And I always
00:24:04
Speaker
Kind of meet some initial like skepticism when I talk to people about this because since I got involved with this project Well one for the project I just had to get buried deep in this literature, you know But I've also at this point given a couple presentations about it I'm set to give another one in November about this project in particular Mm-hmm. Either people are really fascinated and just blown away by how how good the dogs are or they have a lot of skepticism. Well, yeah, but Yeah, but
00:24:34
Speaker
So.
00:24:35
Speaker
canine olfactory system is just incredibly powerful. And they perceive the world entirely different than we do. So along those lines, yeah, no, I understand. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously dogs that can detect cancer and other illnesses as well, not just cadavers and stuff. I mean, it's insane what their noses and their olfactory system can do. But so along these lines, like you mentioned, people are either amazed or highly skeptical
00:25:04
Speaker
How did you convince the Louisiana Division of Archaeology and the Army Corps that using these dogs would actually satisfy the laws and regulations around what you're supposed to do? Because archaeologists, you know, you give us a shovel or a trowel and we just love to dig stuff up and it's really the only thing we believe 100%.
00:25:23
Speaker
How did you convince them this would work? So that was definitely the case, right? Because that was the initial ask, was dig a extremely big hole, right? So at first, we approached. Well, once I had the client convinced, then I was like, all right, now we have to talk to the agencies. So I was just like one gate at a time, basically. And from the client's perspective, they were
00:25:53
Speaker
Like I said, a little skeptical that the agencies were going to approve this, but they were willing to basically, you know, they were definitely supportive of giving it a shot. I mean, honestly, the thing they're most concerned about was just like the logistics and safety of digging up so much of the right of way. Sure. So, you know, this was a potentially a bladeless option. And so talking to the core, basically kind of their default was yet, you know,
00:26:20
Speaker
They read up, I sent them tons of literature. So I sent them like share, you know, point and link where they could download all the references that I had been reviewing basically. Yeah. And then we had a technical call with, uh, Ben Alexander, you know, they got on board pretty quick, but they're basically like, well, you know, we'll defer to whatever the division of archeology says. And, uh, I don't know if you've ever worked in Louisiana, Chris. It's one of the few States I haven't. Yeah.
00:26:47
Speaker
as Dr. Chip McGimsey has been a mainstay in Louisiana for a while and he's a force in southeastern archeology. And I would say most people working in this part of the country, pretty deferential to him. So basically the core conclusion was like, if Chip says it's good, you'll be good. And so that was the real task. So we got a call together.
00:27:12
Speaker
you know, multiple calls really, but with Chip and they'd actually, so I talked to him about the technique and he was familiar, but they'd actually done this kind of work at Poverty Point in Northeastern Louisiana, which is, you know, pre-agricultural mound site. It's the only UNESCO World Heritage site in Louisiana and one of the few in the South in general. And they had just, they had just used these types of dogs. And so he was familiar with it and, you know, he had,
00:27:42
Speaker
signed off on that for poverty point. So he wasn't really super skeptical of the methodology, but he was uncertain from just a legal standpoint of whether it was going to be acceptable for 106 compliance and Louisiana unmarked human burials law. And it just so happens in the state of Louisiana, one of the assistant attorney generals is an archeologist by training. Hmm.
00:28:09
Speaker
and had a previous life as a CRM archaeologist. Wow. And had extensive background and has an extensive background in osteology. And he's actually been the one pushing the protection for historic cemeteries in Louisiana. That's kind of his purview at the state. And so I guess Chip and his name is Ryan.
00:28:31
Speaker
Chip and Ryan had a pretty close working relationship. And so Chip was like, I need to meet with the attorney general's office and get their take on this. And so weeks went by until I finally got an email. It was basically just like Chip saying, I think it literally said, we're willing to give it a try. And I was like, perfect. That's all I need. Right. And so basically like, you know, they had looked at it and
00:29:01
Speaker
You know, the Assistant Attorney General's office decided that it meant legal muster. And, you know, at that point it was, it was off to the races developing a new scope of work, you know, for, for this methodology. And so we had some real technical workshop calls with all the archeologists involved. So myself, Ben, the core archeologist, Jason Emery.
00:29:25
Speaker
and Chip McGimsey and we just got into the weeds with like all the questions that they had and what the best practices would be for this. And basically, and this is something that I had already read in the literature and kind of figured this is where we're going is that, you know, a multi-technology survey is the best approach.
00:29:45
Speaker
And so, you know, they, that was basically going to be the scope that was going to be approved. So we decided we were going to employ great geometry, ground penetrating radar, and these, uh, historic human remains detection dogs. And, you know, is using, uh, multiple dogs as well. Um, so yeah, at that point, it was kind of rewrite the rewrite the scope and get it, get that back in.
00:30:15
Speaker
So between Paul and Ben, they were able to pull two other handlers, you know, kind of sort of local. When it comes to this kind of work, it's like, you know, East half of the country is like basically local. So we pulled in a couple additional handlers with dogs trained in archeological applications for this work. And, you know, we've got a date set and that's what we ended up
00:30:44
Speaker
rolling out with. Okay. Well, I think that's another good point to take a break because when we come back in segment three, let's talk about your results. What'd you guys find? What worked? What didn't work? What did you learn? Would you do this again, uh, for similar circumstances, that kinds of stuff. So we'll talk about all of that. Uh, if we can, if we can get to all of that in segment three on the other side, back in a minute.
00:31:09
Speaker
Hey fans of APN Podcasts, we've got lots of designs over at our Tea Public store. Every purchase helps out the APN with a few cents back to us. Check out the high quality t-shirts, stickers, phone cases, coffee mugs, and a lot more. There are lots of colors to choose from in most of those items and Tea Public often runs 30% discounts. So check out the store at arcpodnet.com slash shop. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop and click on the link.
00:31:36
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archaeotech podcast, episode 189. And I am talking to Zach Overfield. We're talking about using dogs to find human remains, not just human remains, but historic human remains that may or may not even mostly be there in any physical sense, except the dogs know they're there and they can smell them. And that's what we're going to talk about. So we'll get into the other methods you used as well. But what was the deployment methodology of the dogs? What did this look like in practice?
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, in January of this year is when we did it. So you want to do this work when it is cold. And so we got approval on the methods in like probably October. I would have to go back and check that sometime in the fall of 2021.
00:32:24
Speaker
But the dogs, they can't work very effectively in the summer heat. They're very limited kind of amount of like up and running time in the heat. So just from a best practices standpoint, we wanted to schedule when it was cold in South Louisiana. That's a pretty limited time of the year, but January work. And it actually ended up being a particularly cold, cold time, especially for South Louisiana.
00:32:49
Speaker
You know, between Texas and Louisiana is where I do most of my work and I wasn't even like fully prepared for the, for the cold. I had like every layer I had brought with me to the project area on, but yeah, so, uh, we conducted the work in the winter. Um, we had four dogs, uh, Paul Martin of Martin archeology consulting. His dog was equipped with a, with a GPS receiver on her vest to mark, you know, where, you know, basically the ground that she covered, like her amount of coverage and these dogs, you know,
00:33:18
Speaker
They came from different handlers, had different training experiences. So they also had different alerts. So, and different styles. So Paul's dog worked very much in a grid like fashion, like transects back and forth, like what we would kind of expect for like human pedestrian survey almost. Whereas Ben's group were kind of more just like free roaming. And so.
00:33:43
Speaker
You know, we had the GPS data from Paul's dog, which was good to see kind of their coverage, but the other three dogs just kind of a march to the beat of their own drum, mostly. And so that was interesting. And then like one dog would, would sit if they had a positive alert, another would, would bark and another would point. So we also had to be familiar with what their different alerts were. And you know, a lot of it is still really heavily reliant on.
00:34:13
Speaker
the handler's relationship with the dog and understanding like their cues and stuff. So that sort of dog handler relationship is absolutely critical. Like you couldn't just like have any, any old person, you know, work these dogs, right? You know, that was key. And so they,
00:34:31
Speaker
One of the main highlights of this work is that they can cover a lot of ground fast. So we were able to run them. The project area is pretty small, you know, like less than an acre. So the actual footprint of impacts is extremely small, but our study area itself was also less than an acre. So they covered the ground really fast. So we ran them multiple times, but they required like a rest between each time. So it wasn't like they were working all day.
00:34:56
Speaker
They were, we did, but one, we had to, like I said, it ended up being very cold. So when we first thing we got out there in the morning, we had to actually wait a little bit and let the ground warm up because that's when the odor starts getting released from, from the ground. So it's like the best environment is when the ground starts to get a little warm. And so we ran all the dogs in the morning and then in the afternoon and between that we, we conducted our, our other methods basically.
00:35:23
Speaker
There's also kind of one thing we weren't able to get into on this podcast is that there's other cemetery, plantation cemetery nearby called the Kenner cemetery, which factors into this pretty heavily. And so we actually, and it's also unmarked. So we took the dogs over there to establish like a baseline for their alerts.
00:35:42
Speaker
And they were incredibly enthusiastic about the rewards on that cemetery. So we got to see them all sit, point, bark, whatever they, whatever their designated alert was. So we got some extremely enthusiastic positive alert responses or trained alert responses, which was key to, to kind of the results of this. And so that's what the dog survey itself looked like. And then.
00:36:09
Speaker
You know, the gradiometer is pretty standard like grid, you know, 10, you know, every 10 meters we had, you know, the grid laid out across the length of the freight rail. We had intended to run the gradiometer between the trestles of the bridge, but I quickly realized that there's a massive amount of iron between each trestle and that was not going to work. Right. And then underneath the bridge.
00:36:36
Speaker
uh, was, was standing water, like I said, from the low water table. And so we actually ended up pumping out all of the water from underneath the bridge and letting it dry out a little bit to run the GPR between each trestle. So we originally brought the GPR along to only target positive alert response areas. If there were any, since we couldn't run the gradiometer between the trestles, we ended up pushing that GPR between each trestle.
00:37:05
Speaker
So we could get some results. So that's basically the methodology that we ended up employing. Okay. Yeah. So what does this all mean? How did it all come together with the results of the dogs? I'm really curious too, if the dogs, especially like the free roaming ones, the things that they, if they found anything, did they all find the same things or were some of them kind of hit and miss?
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a great question. So we did of the four dogs, we had one that was more junior. Okay. And that, and that dog certainly, uh, performed a little differently than the others and wasn't as effective. That's why you have, well, one, you have multiple dogs so they can check each other. Right. And it's also an opportunity to like, get some additional training, like for the more junior dog. So we really had like three more senior dogs.
00:37:56
Speaker
And then a fourth, who was looking to get some more live action. So that standing water ended up, before we pumped it out, ended up kind of already being an issue.
00:38:08
Speaker
because the dogs really ended up being focused on that standing water and that they provided multiple positive alerts on the standing water. Generally, the majority of them alerted in the same location targeting the standing water, whereas the rest of the study area, which was like a buffered area away from the bridge, they nearly didn't have any alerts except for an area to the south well outside of the footprint of the bridge.
00:38:38
Speaker
So basically we got the we got the great armature results. So, you know, we didn't draw any conclusions until we got back to the office and processed all the remote sensing data. Right. Right. We got the great geometry results. And on the north side of the bridge, it was so disturbed and so much metal, you know, from the construction of the bridge is basically, you know, there was there's no discernible anomaly. This is all noise. Right. On the south side of the bridge.
00:39:05
Speaker
There are a few anomalies that, you know, we are really looking for a pattern of anomalies that would, you know, indicate a planned, you know, union like federal cemetery. There were a few anomalies, you know, they all were either too small or too large to likely be a human burial and there was no pattern of anomalies.
00:39:26
Speaker
And then the GPR data between each trestle didn't identify any anomalies that would indicate human burials. Basically anything that appeared in that data was like present for like one slice. And then a few, you know, millimeters later, it was gone, you know? And so from the remote sensing data, it was like, Oh, that doesn't seem like there's anything here, but we have these dogs alerting on the standing water.
00:39:51
Speaker
And then we had these positive alerts outside the footprint of the bridge, like to the south that weren't related to the standing water. It's like two positive alerts outside the footprint of the bridge, but within our study area, our greater study area, the dogs were alerted on. So the one thing to keep in mind through this whole process is that that dogs
00:40:13
Speaker
they're really more of a presence absence tool when they're looking for remains this old because they're looking for the presence of the odor of human decomposition. And the odor can travel through the ground and basically like rises up like where it has access. So the fact that the dogs were alerting on this standing water really indicates that the odor is being brought in by this water like due to the water table. And since they weren't alerting,
00:40:41
Speaker
really adjacent to the bridge or in spots where there wasn't standing water, it seemed like the alerts that we were getting from them at the standing water, it wasn't quite straightforward that yes, they're alerting at the bridge. Then we have these other locations beyond the standing water where they were also alerting beyond the footprint of the bridge. So what we think is happening here is that A,
00:41:10
Speaker
you know, there could be contamination from the Kenner Cemetery, which is the other plantation cemetery that is bringing the odor in the water table all the way to our project area. It's not far away, you know, several several hundred feet. So it's a little far away to think. Sure.
00:41:28
Speaker
that that much of a indication was coming up in the study area, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility with the way that the odor travels. What I think is more likely the case is that the cemetery is nearby and that, you know, the historical count, you know, while seemingly initially pretty flimsy is fairly accurate. And that where the dogs are alerting beyond just south of the study area,
00:41:57
Speaker
is probably more closely indicative of where the burials are and that we really can't take into account the alerts at the standing water. So basically what the dogs have told us is there is the scent of human decomposition in this area. But with a combination of the gradiometry and the GPR and the positive alerts outside of our footprint,
00:42:22
Speaker
Our conclusion was that they're not within the footprint of this bridge and they're not going to be impacted by the driving of the piles, but that, you know, we also recommended if there's any additional work to the south of this bridge, that additional, you know, remote sensing or survey, you know, would be warranted. So I think is happening, you know, kind of where I'm leaning is that this union cemetery is nearby, but it's south of our study area and the
00:42:52
Speaker
Army Corps and the Division of Archaeology, who were on site during the fieldwork, by the way, and they came out to see this happen, including Chip, the state archaeologist, they agreed. And the other thing we factored in is like these positive alerts underneath the bridge at the standing water were very weak, especially in comparison to the baseline that we established at the At the Kenner Cemetery, where we positively knew the location of an unmarked historic cemetery. Right.
00:43:20
Speaker
but not much different in age as well. And so at these standing water, getting weak hits, we have these hits to the south of the study area. And then our other two tech lines of evidence that we were employed just really entirely negative for what we were looking for. We felt confident that we could at least say that the pilings weren't going to be driven through any burials. And that was really the question that we were trying to answer.
00:43:49
Speaker
So in the end, the project was able to, I guess, move on. Yeah. Yep. So the core approved of the results division of archeology approved of the results. And so from an environmental standpoint and cultural resources, yeah, the projects received all the clearances and permits that it needed. And it's, it'll be marked marching on.
00:44:11
Speaker
Okay. All right. Well, so does this, I mean, I know, okay. I've worked in archeology a long time and it just happens that the very first, well, I guess the second project I ever did, I almost don't count the first one cause it was North Dakota and shut down by a snowstorm like a week after I started.
00:44:28
Speaker
My second project in archaeology lasted about seven months, and it was in downtown Miami. Across from the Miami Circle, for anybody that heard about that, it was related to the Miami Circle but different, and it was full of human remains. There were these limestone solution holes and human remains in there, and my wife actually is an archaeologist as well, and she worked in her early days on a cemetery project in New Jersey. But to be honest, since then,
00:44:52
Speaker
We've rarely worked on any like cemetery related or burial related projects. They just, I don't know, maybe we just moving west. They just, they just didn't come up that often. So I guess where I'm going with this is, you know, in your area and working with HDR and in your area of work,
00:45:10
Speaker
How often do you think you come across or are you having to deal with historic cemeteries or even prehistoric burials for that matter? But how often are you dealing with that and does this experience with the cadaver dogs, you know, change how you're going to approach new projects like that in the future?
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. So in my previous firm, I was working almost exclusively in the city of San Antonio, which has a municipal level ordinance for archeology. Okay. And we were, we were dealing with historic cemeteries and human burials frequently. And so that's where the bulk of my cemetery investigation experience comes from. I have done just one exhumation and the kind of multiple survey level cemetery investigations, like delineating cemeteries and cemetery features, you know, burial shafts.
00:45:57
Speaker
and managing those kind of projects, I would say at HDR as a company, you know, across the country, like it has come up and we do have a couple of osteologists and bioarchaeologists as a part of our program. And we're looking for more opportunities to not only do that kind of work, but also apply these techniques and continue working with Paul Martin and Ben, you know, where possible.
00:46:22
Speaker
because we thought it was a very productive, professional relationship. And since this project pursued other work of this nature, and I think it has certainly changed my approach for cemetery investigations. I think it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. It's just another tool in the archaeologist tool belt, really. Because, like I said, when you're dealing with remains this old,
00:46:44
Speaker
You know, you talked about the beginning of the podcast, like the dogs honing in on like the ashes and an urn, you know, and it's like when they're looking for the scent of human decomposition, I think you can't really expect them to pinpoint exactly where.
00:46:59
Speaker
And we're really looking for like presence or absence or like general area, you know, and that's where like the GPR comes in, right? If the dogs are able to cover a lot of ground, like much quicker and more cost effectively, but can give you a general area where human remains are that you can come in.
00:47:15
Speaker
with those more precise tools and really target, you know, doing the GPR and like a portion of your project area rather than being like, well, we got to run remote, you know, slower, more expensive remote sensing technologies across this whole project area. The dogs move fast and I think they can really, I think improve like cost competitiveness for these sort of cemetary survey level work. But it's really, if you're working in a cemetery that
00:47:44
Speaker
that's marked and you already know where it is and you're just looking to delineate burial shafts, you wouldn't use the dogs.
00:47:51
Speaker
But what I see more and more, just in our popular headlines, is unfortunately with these American Indian boarding schools where they don't know, we now know that there are likely mass cemeteries at these locations, but we don't know necessarily where on the grounds they are. I could see this being a really valid technique.
00:48:15
Speaker
for those applications in conjunction with other remote sensing technologies. You always want it to be a multi-technology survey. I would never recommend just using the dogs because if we had just used the dogs for this project, we would have probably ended up still having to dig up the whole bridge because we did have positive alerts underneath the bridge. But we had multiple lines of evidence and we're able to filter through all the information that we had
00:48:45
Speaker
to arrive at a sound occlusion that the regulatory agencies concurred with. But at the same time, if you have a large project area, are you going to want to run the GPR over the whole thing? Are you going to want to scrape up the whole thing? For this project, we were just trying to answer the question whether or not the pilings were going to be driven through burials. So I think it was kind of a
00:49:14
Speaker
And we could answer that question solidly, but I do think a lot of these cases, like if you're, you know, they could lead to, you know, scrape, you know, scraping. But we also have a lot of projects where Native American tribes may not want you to do any scraping. You know, this is a totally non-invasive, non-destructive technique. And if the goal is avoidance to just not impact human burials,
00:49:36
Speaker
This can, you know, direct you, you know, provide direction on how to avoid these features. For sure. Yeah. I think, you know, no, in my research, it seems like this has had pretty minimal CRM application. And certainly this was a first in Louisiana. But, you know, it seems like this has been being done in academia for like maybe the last decade or so.
00:49:58
Speaker
Um, and I said, you know, in the state of Texas and no text dot has, has worked with Ben to do this work. And I think the company you were talking about in California, was that ICF maybe? I think so. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I read a lot of their literature because it was a couple of folks, one or two folks from there, like one of the most recent papers that came out last year on this topic had an ICF author.
00:50:23
Speaker
So I think this is going to be a snowball effect. We'll start to see more and more of this. And the fact that the state of Louisiana has approved this for CRM worked. I've also learned that since this project, the state and CHIP have already recommended to other consultants to employ this methodology.
00:50:42
Speaker
So that just leads me to one last question. I know we're running over on this segment, running a little long on it, but I've got to ask. On the Archaeotech podcast, we talk a lot about different technologies. We've hammered on about how we don't really want to call. Paul and I are really into digital recording methods and things like that. And we're tired of calling stuff like that, digital archaeology, because all archaeology is basically digital archaeology and should be.
00:51:06
Speaker
So, we're kind of starting to drop that kind of thing. But even so, like even just a few years ago, we talked about say drones and it was somewhat of a novel concept for a CRM company to own drones and let alone have people have their FAA certifications to fly the drones commercially, right?
00:51:25
Speaker
their part 107 license. My question is, do you think that's early days on this, but a company like HDR, who works across the nation, has offices all over the place, does projects in a lot of different areas. Do you think HDR might have a cadaver dog team at some point that maybe flies around the country? Because I couldn't see a local office necessarily having one unless you had a lot of work, but maybe having a team.
00:51:50
Speaker
I absolutely hope so. I absolutely hope so. That's certainly a strong interest of mine. And I think hopefully it's HDR, but if not, I think we'll see definitely firms go that way. And again, it'd be probably part of the... We have a pretty extensive remote sensing team just outside of cultural resources.
00:52:15
Speaker
HDR is like flying drones to record bridges and making high precision 3D models of bridges for bridge inspections. That's one that we didn't even get into. We also had a drone out on this project. We got current aerial imagery via drone to incorporate into our project so we could look at the modern landscape and how it's been impacted by the sand mining activities and what doesn't show up in the Google Earth imagery or historic
00:52:40
Speaker
aerials, you know, I mean, we've got a lot better visibility by flying a drone out there. And we also played around with with different imaging, you know, technologies. And we actually just during this process, we inadvertently identified the exact location of a sugar cane mill in this spillway that the division of archaeology had had mismapped, you know, just old
00:53:06
Speaker
outdated location information, right? And we were able to identify, we identified it and we got highly accurate GPS points and aerial imagery on it. And we weren't even out there to do that. Nice, nice. Yeah, that was actually pretty cool. And I wish we could have looked more into that site, but it was way outside of the project area.
00:53:34
Speaker
Well, see, that's what I'm talking about, right? Drones are practically standard these days. You're kind of not doing your job if you don't do that at this point, and maybe not quite there yet. But it's becoming a more just accepted part of the methodology. So it'd be nice to see these other techniques, like using the dogs and things like that in those areas, definitely come up. I've always thought, too, my wife and I travel around the country quite a bit, just before we lived in an RV and as archaeologists.
00:54:02
Speaker
I'm just like, man, there's been so many people that have lived on this soil, but it's still such a big area. But you go to someplace like the southeast or the east coast where, prehistorically, there was still high numbers of people at certain points, but also historically, just massive amounts of people. And I'm like, how do cadaver dogs not just go insane? Because I feel like there's human remains everywhere in some of those areas. And it's kind of amazing that there's not. Our tendency to bury people in cemeteries is probably the only reason why.
00:54:30
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, you actually kind of bring up a good point. So you don't, you don't want to run the dogs in like a dense, more modern cemetery. Cause one, like those sensors just be entirely overwhelmed. Overloaded. Yeah. But two, you don't want to, it's really not good to run them in cemeteries that have modern like embalming techniques because like formaldehyde and
00:54:53
Speaker
those chemicals can be damaging to the dog's olfactory system. So there's actually one of the handlers related an unfortunate account to me that because they do a lot of like POW work and they had a dog who located a crash and like the human remains from a military crash.
00:55:13
Speaker
and that there were toxic chemicals as a result of the crash in the plane. And the dog did its job, found the remains, but ultimately developed cancer and died. Oh my god. From the exposure. So you definitely have to be really cognizant of the dog's health and safety. That's talking about time of year, you're running them, time of day. So there's those factors to consider. We wouldn't run the dogs in August in the state of Texas.
00:55:42
Speaker
Someday we'll take those considerations into field techs as well, but that's probably way in the future. Yeah, right? Exactly. I think we definitely considered the safety of these duds way more than field technician safety gets considered by clients and agencies. Yeah, because I don't think anyone's ever suggested in the state of Texas, like, oh yeah, we shouldn't do the survey because it's August. Yeah, carry a few extra liters of water and let's get to it.
00:56:11
Speaker
Well, you know, with, you know, with climate change and the earth heating up and this probably being the coolest, coolest summer of the rest of our lives. And, um, this being like the hottest ever on record in the state of Texas. Um, and with, you know, unfortunately, I'm sure you probably saw on the news that archeological technician died in Northern Louisiana. Yeah, we talked about her. Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
that, you know, I wouldn't, you know, in the north, you know, there's a more of a field season, you know, get certain point where it snows and freezes, you just can't, you know, effectively do field work. Right. I imagine a future in the south where we do get to that point where it's just like, we can't work during certain parts of the year. For sure.
00:56:51
Speaker
your field season is September to May rather than all year long. Yeah. So we'll be, instead of moving people from the North to the South to do work in the winter, we'll be doing, we'll be doing both or I'll be trading. I mean, I knew archeologists were destined for a seasonal round at some point where they're just like constantly North to South, North to South fall in the seasons, following the digs. So, yeah.
00:57:15
Speaker
All right, Zach. Well, that's about all the time we have. In fact, we're well over time, but this has been a really awesome discussion. And I hope people take something out of this, because there are, as you mentioned, you work with people in Texas and in Louisiana. And I mentioned the company out of California. I'm willing to bet there are, I wouldn't say a number of other companies, but definitely other organizations that are doing this around the country. And if you think you may have
00:57:40
Speaker
human remains on your project, or it's been rumored or suspected or something like that, this is definitely an effective, cost-effective solution. And any time you can do nondestructive archaeology, that is kind of the dream and the goal. Excavation should be the last thing you do. Just in case something needs to be preserved or something like that, but also it's expensive and takes a long time. And it's just resource-intensive. So we can avoid doing that, but still get the same results.
00:58:09
Speaker
then I'm all for it. So thank you very much for coming on and talking about this. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate you having me. It was a joy. Hope to be in touch again soon.
00:58:24
Speaker
Awesome. Sounds good. And thanks again to HDR for bringing this up to us and for your client for letting you speak about it too, because that's also a rare circumstance where a client's like, yeah, go ahead and talk about it. Most of them are, here's the NDA. Don't ever speak of this again. I'd like to take a moment, you know, to acknowledge Canadian national and specifically Carrie Harris and Ray Baker, who were big supporters of this.
00:58:52
Speaker
but also, you know, Martin archeology consulting and, uh, K9 search detection. And so Paul Martin, Ben Alexander, and then Lisa Higgins and Karen Parkett are the other handlers I worked with. And, uh, their dogs, Abby, Rip, Penny and Polly.
00:59:09
Speaker
There you go. Love it. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Zach. And to our listeners, Paul should be back here soon. I don't know if he'll be back on the next recording because he's gone for like six weeks, but we'll figure something out. But either way, thanks for listening. If you've got any topics or anything else you would like us to cover or interesting people we should interview, then send it my way, chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Thanks for that, and we'll see you next week.
00:59:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paulatlugol.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
01:00:03
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
01:00:30
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this podcast. Please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcasting app. You can also consider becoming a member so we can keep content like this free and available to all. Check out pricing and info at arcpodnet.com slash members. Thanks again and have a great day.