Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Rocco, Ann Christensen's young shepherd, alerted where Renzo had shown interest, fling-
ing himself down in abandon. Whump. Dusty, Charm Gentry's Beauceron, alerted there,
too, after mincing through the field and occasionally popping straight up like an antelope
that had found a snake beneath her. So did Kessa, Ann's gray sable shepherd.
On that hill of four or five acres, the five dogs walked and ran, quartered back and forth,
slowed, then alerted on two general flat spots where Strega and Renzo had alerted. Dogs can
alert on top of other dogs' spots, although that's not how they are trained. Handlers can sub-
consciously signal to their dogs. None of the handlers was working the problem blind. While
the dogs and the oral history overlapped, using GPR in that rocky environment would be
impossible. Once we left the field, all that would remain would be the stories and GPS loc-
ations marked in the dogs' training records. No names. No headstones. A field of clover and
thistle.
“I've never done anything that old,” said Arpad Vass. Then he continued. “But it does not
surprise me that a dog will alert. Clay makes a nice vault.”
• • •
There's little science to shed light on what is happening when dogs sweep through an old
graveyard. Archaeology is already a speculative discipline. What can dogs' noses add? What
are they alerting on? Handlers' unconscious cues? Old decomposed trees? Gravestones, when
they are there? Are people simply watching the dogs work, adding historical fantasy to evoc-
ative landscapes, and creating erroneous paint-by-noses pictures?
Several teams across the country now work with old burials; a few are starting to get con-
sistent and more verifiable results with the combination of ground-penetrating radar, dogs,
and oral and written history. Scattered excavations here and there—proof positive—are cor-
roborating those finds. The arena of cadaver dogs and historic remains is still clouded and
contentious, though. It's particularly hard to prove the worth of working dogs when dealing
with old burials, because more often than not, excavation (aka confirming proof ) just isn't
going to happen.
Mary Cablk has done research using historical-remains detection dogs on the Old Spanish
Trail on several possible burial sites, including some blank areas. Now she would like to
corroborate, with core sample testing, where the dogs alerted and where the GPR showed
changes.
“The historical human-remains detection is something that I go back and forth on,” she
said. “Do I think that dogs can do it? Yes. Do I think that all the teams out there across the
country who claim they can do it can do it? No. That's what I call faith-based dog work.”
Are dogs trained to detect ancient remains, as Mary notes when she is at her most skeptic-
al, simply “great anomaly detectors”? She wonders whether the anomaly might be simply a
