Human remains detection dogs are trained to alert when they find the scent of human remains. Here, Addie of Virginia Recovery Canines sits to alert her handler. Photo courtesy of Fort Eustis Cultural Resources Program. BY JODI PETERSON
In southeastern Virginia, Joint Base Langley-Eustis has been military property since 1918. But human habitation at the site, known as Mulberry Island, goes back at least 10,000 years. In 1607, English settlers began to arrive, and for the next 300 years, people of European and African descent inhabited the area until Camp Eustis was established.
Given this long occupation, it is no surprise that Mulberry Island has more than 230 archaeological sites, including cemeteries. Three of the cemeteries contain marked graves. The locations of several more are approximated from oral tradition and a 1918 map of the pre-military landscape.
Knowing where people have been buried is necessary not only to understand and honor their history, but also to ensure that military projects do not inadvertently disturb gravesites. For the Department of Defense, showing respect for the dead and their descendants is imperative. It’s not always easy to determine the location of old burial sites, though, especially since many are unmarked. That’s where the keen nose of man’s best friend comes in.
In 2022, after reading about a study that included research conducted at Fort Eisenhower (formerly Fort Gordon) in Georgia comparing the accuracy of human remains detection dogs and geophysical survey techniques in locating burials, the Fort Eustis cultural resources staff began to wonder if dogs could aid their efforts to understand the cemeteries at the installation. A local nonprofit, Virginia Recovery Canines, Inc., volunteered to help investigate several sites with dogs trained to detect human remains.
The olfactory powers of dogs have been used for hundreds of years to locate the deceased. The ultra-sensitive canine nose can sniff out recent burials as well as those hundreds of years old, making dogs useful allies for archaeologists. While geophysical survey techniques such as ground-penetrating radar provide more precise information, surveying a large area with GPR can be prohibitively expensive. Performing a dog search first can help narrow the location to be examined, significantly reducing the cost. Dogs can also search locations where ground-penetrating radar doesn’t work well, such as uneven ground covered in brush and fallen tree limbs. “Dogs are faster and cheaper and can work on bumpy ground,” said Courtney Birkett, a CEMML archaeologist involved with the project. “Both approaches have their place.”
The scent tracking of dogs has some limitations, though. For instance, extreme temperatures can hinder scent detection, and dogs usually cannot pinpoint an individual grave but can indicate only a general area, because odor travels along paths of least resistance such as tree roots and underground fence posts.
At Fort Eustis, handlers first did a test run to ensure that the dogs could identify unmarked graves in known cemeteries from the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of those sites had been purchased from the Mulberry Island Cemetery Club, which existed around the turn of the 20th century. Cultural resources staff wanted to determine if the plot had actually been used for burials before the Army acquired it. The other two sites were family cemeteries, located on what’s now a golf course on the installation.
The day before the dog teams arrived, staff members poked holes into the ground at each of the sites, to allow the scent of any human remains to rise to the surface. On the following day, two dogs checked the sites independently of each other. Directed by their handlers, they trotted over the ground, sniffing. When they detected the target scent, they alerted by sitting down with their noses closest to the strongest source of odor. The test showed that the dogs could successfully locate old burials – they alerted at one location at the cemetery club site, and near marked graves at the other two sites.
Next was an effort to locate three unmarked graveyards known only from local tradition — one family cemetery and two cemeteries for enslaved individuals. The dogs alerted once at a golf course site thought to hold the remains of more than 80 enslaved people. The other two cemeteries were associated with the Crafford family, once prominent residents of Mulberry Island. The dogs didn’t alert at the probable site of the Crafford family cemetery, although they showed interest in a nearby Civil War earthwork that contained soil from the cemetery. In the woods near the presumed burial location of enslaved people from the Crafford farm, the dogs alerted in two places.
While the dogs couldn’t identify the family cemetery, they did provide helpful information about the location of the two enslaved cemeteries. “It’s gratifying that the dogs alerted to possible burials out in the woods where we didn’t expect to find anything. Now that we know where these enslaved people were most likely buried, in the future we can help keep that from being destroyed,” said Birkett.
Confirming grave locations beyond a doubt would require further investigation, but that isn’t planned since the various cemeteries are not currently threatened in any way. The cultural resources team does hope to eventually use ground-penetrating radar in the flatter, more open areas and compare those results to the dogs’ findings. The team also anticipates working with Virginia Recovery Canines to explore other locations at Fort Eustis that might contain burials, such as the original site of the Colossian Baptist Church, areas surrounding 18th-century house foundations, and perhaps even some Native American sites with the consent of local Tribes.
“The use of human remains detection dogs is becoming more widespread in archaeology,” noted Birkett. “We are fortunate we can benefit from their noses to tell the story of Mulberry Island before it became Fort Eustis.” Added CEMML’s Executive Director Barker Fariss, “CEMML is excited to be at the forefront of this new technique and contributing to the science of using canines for archaeological detection of human remains.”
* This article was based on conference presentations and research posters developed by Courtney Birkett, CEMML archaeologist at Joint Base Langley-Eustis.
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