University students attempt to identify unmarked graves
<p>Students from the University of Montana set up a magnatometer at the West End Cemetery on Sunday.</p>
In an effort to continue improving the West End Cemetery, Ellen Matz and the board contacted the University of Montana in Missoula two years ago with hopes that the university could aid them in identifying portions of the cemetery where what lies beneath the surface is unknown.
On Sunday morning, a group of three students from the university arrived at the cemetery to utilize a variety of instruments in order to create a map of question areas.
“I was so excited to hear these guys were coming up,” Matz said. “We had no other way to identify areas we think could be unmarked graves. What I was looking to do is to see what these areas contained.”
The three students, Brennus Voarino, Eric Lavering and Tanja Benadicte Karlsen, are enrolled in a class entitled “Sub-Surface Imaging in Archeology” and according to Lavering once the idea of working in the cemetery was brought up by their professor for a final project the group “jumped all over it.”
“We were all really interested in it,” Lavering said. “This is a project that actually matters.”
“A lot of projects in college are just made up for you,” Voarino, an exchange student originally from France who studies in Ireland added. “But this is real.”
“We have to get it right,” Karlsen, an exchange student from Norway added enthusiastically.
The group of students arrived at the cemetery at 9 am and began setting up a device known as a Resistivitymeter, which utilizes a series of electrical pulses in a given area to determine the electrical conductivity of the area.
According to the group, areas of the ground that simply contain soil will show less resistivity and be very conductive. What the group will look for after generating a 3D model of the area’s resistivity are areas of low conductivity – meaning that something other than soil is below ground and causing less conductivity.
“The software we input our data into utilizes heavy-duty math we couldn’t do ten years ago,” Lavering said. “We will be able to generate a map and shapes will start forming.”
This map, and the shapes of areas with high resistivity, will enable the crew at the cemetery to determine areas that could contain unmarked graves.
The students worked throughout the day with the Resistivitymeter and a Magnatometer, a device used to measure magnetic waves, to gather the data they will need to generate maps of the areas in question.
By April 30, the group of students will present the project to both their professor and Matz.
For Matz, the final data could provide her and the cemetery with answers to several questions.
“Our records are not bad but not great,” Matz said. “This will help us get them better. It would be nice to know where all the graves are so we can mark them and we don’t inadvertently disturb one.”