A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds

Alastair Ruffell; Sean McAllister

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds

Alastair Ruffell, Sean McAllister

Published in International Journal of Archaeology (Volume 3, Issue 1-1)

Received: 1 September 2014 Accepted: 17 September 2014 Published: 29 October 2014

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Abstract

Burial grounds are commonly surveyed and searched by both police/humanitarian search teams and archaeologists. One aspect of an efficient search is to establish areas free of recent internments to allow the concentration of assets in suspect terrain. While 100% surety in locating remains can never be achieved, the deployment of a red, amber green (RAG) system for assessment has proven invaluable to our surveys. The RAG system is based on a desktop study (including burial ground records), visual inspection (mounding, collapses) and use of geophysics (in this case, ground penetrating radar or GPR) for a multi-proxy assessment that provides search authorities an assessment of the state of inhumations and a level of legal backup for decisions they make on excavation or not (‘exit strategy’). The system is flexible and will be built upon as research continues.

Published in	International Journal of Archaeology (Volume 3, Issue 1-1) This article belongs to the Special Issue Archaeological Sciences
DOI	10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
Page(s)	1-8
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2014. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Burial Grounds, Clandestine Graves, RAG System, Ground-Penetrating Radar, Search

References

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[2]	Dunk J Rugg, J 1994, The Management of Old Cemetery land: Now and Future: a Report of the University of York Cemetery Research Group. Shaw & Sons Ltd, London. 105p.
[3]	Harding V 1993, Burial of the plague dead in early modern London. In: Epidemic and Disease in London, Champion JAI (ed) Centre for Metropolitan History Working Papers, 1, pp.53-64.
[4]	Hart A Casper S 2004, Potential Groundwater Pollutants from Cemeteries. Environment Agency report. Environment Agency Publication, Almondsbury, Bristol. 35pp.
[5]	Loudon J Claudius 1843, On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries. Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 151pp.
[6]	O’Neill KL 2012, There is no more room: cemeteries, personhood and bare death. Ethnography 13 510-530.
[7]	Rugg J 2000, Defining the place of burial: what makes a cemetery a cemetery? Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying 5 259-275.
[8]	Field G Leonard G Nobes D C 2001, Where is Percy Rutherford's grave? In: Jones, Martin & Sheppard, Peter (Eds.) Australasian Connections and New Directions: Proceedings of the 7th Australasian Archæometry Conference, Research in Anthropology and Linguistics University of Auckland 5 123-140.
[9]	Ellwood BB Owsley DW Ellwood SH Mercado-Allinger PA 1994, Search for the grave of the hanged Texas gunfighter, William Preston Longley. Historical Archaeology 28 94–112.
[10]	Buck SC 2003, Searching for graves using geophysical technology: field tests with ground penetrating radar, magnetometry and electrical resistivity. Journal of Forensic Sciences 48 5–11.
[11]	France D L Griffin T J Swanburg JG Lindemann JW Davenport GC Trammell V Travis CT Kondratieff B Nelson A Castellano K Hopkins D Adair T 1997, Necrosearch revisited: further multidisciplinary approaches to the detection of clandestine graves. In: Haglund, W.D., Sorg, M.H. (Eds.), Forensic Taphonomy: the Postmortem Fate of Human Remains. CRC Press, pp. 497–509.
[12]	Nobes D C 1999, Geophysical Surveys of Burial Sites: A Case Study of the Oaro Urupa. Geophysics 64 357–367.
[13]	Nobes D C 2000, The search for "Yvonne": A case example of the delineation of a grave using near-surface geophysical methods. Journal of Forensic Sciences 45 715–721.
[14]	Pringle JK Jervis J Cassella JP Cassidy NJ 2008, Time-lapse geophysical investigations over a simulated urban clandestine grave. Journal of Forensic Sciences 53 1405–1417.
[15]	Pringle JK Jervis JR 2010, Electrical resistivity survey to search for a recent clandestine burial of a homicide victim, UK. Forensic Science International 202 e1–e7.
[16]	Donnelly LJ Harrison M 2013 Geomorphological and geoforensic interpretation of maps, aerial imagery, conditions of diggability and the colour-coded RAG prioritization system in searches for criminal burials. In: Pirrie D Ruffell A Dawson L (Eds) Environmental and Criminal Geoforensics. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 384 173-194.
[17]	Ruffell A McCabe A Donnelly CJ Sloan B 2009, Location and assessment of an historic (15-60 years old) mass grave using geographic and ground-penetrating radar investigation, NW Ireland. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 54, 15-26.
[18]	Ruffell A 2002, Remote detection and identification of organic remains. Archaeological Prospection 9 115-122.

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APA Style

Alastair Ruffell, Sean McAllister. (2014). A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. International Journal of Archaeology, 3(1-1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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ACS Style

Alastair Ruffell; Sean McAllister. A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. Int. J. Archaeol. 2014, 3(1-1), 1-8. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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AMA Style

Alastair Ruffell, Sean McAllister. A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. Int J Archaeol. 2014;3(1-1):1-8. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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@article{10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11,
  author = {Alastair Ruffell and Sean McAllister},
  title = {A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds},
  journal = {International Journal of Archaeology},
  volume = {3},
  number = {1-1},
  pages = {1-8},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  abstract = {Burial grounds are commonly surveyed and searched by both police/humanitarian search teams and archaeologists. One aspect of an efficient search is to establish areas free of recent internments to allow the concentration of assets in suspect terrain. While 100% surety in locating remains can never be achieved, the deployment of a red, amber green (RAG) system for assessment has proven invaluable to our surveys. The RAG system is based on a desktop study (including burial ground records), visual inspection (mounding, collapses) and use of geophysics (in this case, ground penetrating radar or GPR) for a multi-proxy assessment that provides search authorities an assessment of the state of inhumations and a level of legal backup for decisions they make on excavation or not (‘exit strategy’). The system is flexible and will be built upon as research continues.},
 year = {2014}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds
AU  - Alastair Ruffell
AU  - Sean McAllister
Y1  - 2014/10/29
PY  - 2014
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
DO  - 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
T2  - International Journal of Archaeology
JF  - International Journal of Archaeology
JO  - International Journal of Archaeology
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-7595
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
AB  - Burial grounds are commonly surveyed and searched by both police/humanitarian search teams and archaeologists. One aspect of an efficient search is to establish areas free of recent internments to allow the concentration of assets in suspect terrain. While 100% surety in locating remains can never be achieved, the deployment of a red, amber green (RAG) system for assessment has proven invaluable to our surveys. The RAG system is based on a desktop study (including burial ground records), visual inspection (mounding, collapses) and use of geophysics (in this case, ground penetrating radar or GPR) for a multi-proxy assessment that provides search authorities an assessment of the state of inhumations and a level of legal backup for decisions they make on excavation or not (‘exit strategy’). The system is flexible and will be built upon as research continues.
VL  - 3
IS  - 1-1
ER  -

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Author Information

Alastair Ruffell

School of Geography, Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast, N. Ireland, UK, BT7 1NN
Sean McAllister

DiscoverEverAfter/SFM Engineering, 15A Main Street, Portglenone, County Antrim, N. Ireland, UK, BT44 8AA

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APA Style

Alastair Ruffell, Sean McAllister. (2014). A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. International Journal of Archaeology, 3(1-1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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ACS Style

Alastair Ruffell; Sean McAllister. A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. Int. J. Archaeol. 2014, 3(1-1), 1-8. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

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AMA Style

Alastair Ruffell, Sean McAllister. A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds. Int J Archaeol. 2014;3(1-1):1-8. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11,
  author = {Alastair Ruffell and Sean McAllister},
  title = {A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds},
  journal = {International Journal of Archaeology},
  volume = {3},
  number = {1-1},
  pages = {1-8},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ija.s.2015030101.11},
  abstract = {Burial grounds are commonly surveyed and searched by both police/humanitarian search teams and archaeologists. One aspect of an efficient search is to establish areas free of recent internments to allow the concentration of assets in suspect terrain. While 100% surety in locating remains can never be achieved, the deployment of a red, amber green (RAG) system for assessment has proven invaluable to our surveys. The RAG system is based on a desktop study (including burial ground records), visual inspection (mounding, collapses) and use of geophysics (in this case, ground penetrating radar or GPR) for a multi-proxy assessment that provides search authorities an assessment of the state of inhumations and a level of legal backup for decisions they make on excavation or not (‘exit strategy’). The system is flexible and will be built upon as research continues.},
 year = {2014}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - A RAG System for the Management Forensic and Archaeological Searches of Burial Grounds
AU  - Alastair Ruffell
AU  - Sean McAllister
Y1  - 2014/10/29
PY  - 2014
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
DO  - 10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
T2  - International Journal of Archaeology
JF  - International Journal of Archaeology
JO  - International Journal of Archaeology
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-7595
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ija.s.2015030101.11
AB  - Burial grounds are commonly surveyed and searched by both police/humanitarian search teams and archaeologists. One aspect of an efficient search is to establish areas free of recent internments to allow the concentration of assets in suspect terrain. While 100% surety in locating remains can never be achieved, the deployment of a red, amber green (RAG) system for assessment has proven invaluable to our surveys. The RAG system is based on a desktop study (including burial ground records), visual inspection (mounding, collapses) and use of geophysics (in this case, ground penetrating radar or GPR) for a multi-proxy assessment that provides search authorities an assessment of the state of inhumations and a level of legal backup for decisions they make on excavation or not (‘exit strategy’). The system is flexible and will be built upon as research continues.
VL  - 3
IS  - 1-1
ER  -

Copy | Download