Locating Buried Bodies

There are various types of graves: unmarked graves such as those that might be found in a cemetery; historical graves that have some documentation but whose location is uncertain; mass graves that contain many bodies created during periods of conflict (or even disease); and burials in which murder victims have been hidden.

Finding the locations of all these graves can be problematic. Since the late twentieth century an increasing amount of fieldwork and research has been conducted with the goal of lessening the time taken to locate graves and unnecessary excavation.

Methods of grave location include above ground surface and below surface techniques. At the ground surface there can be signs of graves that are able to readily discerned by the investigator. These include changes to vegetation growth compared to the surrounding area, depressions within the soil, soil colour differences, landscape clearance evidence such as areas with no surface ground litter, and animal foraging that sometimes leaves bones scattered.

Below the surface are signs of graves and/or buried human remains such as differences in the soil chemistry compared to adjacent areas, alterations to soil stratigraphy (or layering), moisture retention rates and the presence of a body. Methods of identifying anomalous differences between a burial and its surrounding sub-surface landscape include the use of geophysical instruments such as the ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, magnetometers, and electromagnetic induction.

The clandestine grave, that of the murder victim, is probably the most difficult of graves to locate. That is because it is one body or the skeletal remains not in a coffin, and usually at a shallow depth. In terms of detection this means the anomalies or differences available to detect can be minimal or that many smaller anomalies such as tree roots or rocks beneath the surface may be apparent during a geophysical survey reading, that give similar results in a survey.

At my research site (refer the Graves section) I have tested several geophysical instruments and recorded changes to graves from the surface. There is no single instrument that is applicable to all circumstances and an understanding of the soil type and weather conditions leading up to the search and during the search is important to the outcome of a grave location investigation. Sometimes the use of multiple instruments is useful to maximise results.