We support archaeologists, historians, cultural resource professionals, and preservation groups seeking to identify possible burial locations associated with historic settlements, mission sites, hospital grounds, boarding schools, homesteads, pioneer cemeteries, or other historical landscapes. Detection dogs may help refine search areas before excavation or geophysical work begins, particularly where burial evidence is no longer visible on the ground surface.
Many older cemeteries contain graves that are undocumented, displaced in relation to surviving markers, or entirely lost to vegetation, erosion, land use change, or incomplete records. We assist projects intended to locate potential burial areas so that cemeteries may be more accurately mapped, protected, restored, and respectfully maintained.
In selected cases, we support law enforcement or emergency management in searches for historical human remains connected to missing persons or decades-old investigations. Such searches often involve difficult scent and landscape variables including floodplain change, erosion, fill, vegetation succession, burial disturbance, and long-term decomposition.
We provide consultation regarding the potential role of Human Remains Detection Dogs in a project, search design considerations, scent and environmental factors, mapping strategy, and the integration of canine findings with archaeological or investigative workflows.
We are available to do presentations in-person or over Zoom about the work we do with our specially trained dogs.