Mass Burial Sites Research Articles

Peculiarities of identification of human remains discovered during inspection of mass burial sites

Peculiarities of identification of human remains discovered during inspection of mass burial sites

Evaluating possible prehistoric cave art in the central Mediterranean: Analyses of pigment traces and identification of taphonomic processes at Għar Ħasan, Malta

The archaeology of the Maltese Islands, particularly the megalithic ‘temple’ structures and underground mass burial sites (hypogea) of the ‘Temple Period’ (ca. 3800 – 2300 BCE), has been the subject of considerable interest. Less is known about the prehistoric use of caves. In particular reports of prehistoric cave art at Għar Ħasan (Hasan’s Cave) have remained controversial, and have been argued to reflect an otherwise unknown pre-Neolithic occupation on the islands.Here, we report a reinvestigation of Għar Ħasan. To distinguish graffiti that have accumulated over the last century and possible older rock art, a range of non-invasive methods were used to determine the chemical properties and colour spectrum of the pigment traces: portable energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (p-ED-XRF) and visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. In addition, pigment traces were analyzed with digital microscopy and image enhancement techniques (DStretch).Most of the previously reported cave paintings were shown to have been produced in the last century. One key panel may be older, but vandalism and other destructive processes make a definitive assessment challenging. While we therefore consider the evidence for ‘Palaeolithic’ cave art at Għar Ħasan to be inconclusive, our study also identified complex taphonomic processes that pose severe limitations on the identification of pigment via p-ED-XRF and spectroscopy and can inform and guide future initiatives for rock art conservation.

Strong but not Unbeatable: Two Cases of Healed Severe Skull Trauma in Males Buried in Medieval Mass Graves (Kutná Hora-Sedlec, Czech Republic)

This paper presents two cases of healed skull trauma recovered from medieval mass burial sites in Kutná Hora-Sedlec (Kutná Hora District/CZ). These recently unearthed burial pits are historically and contextually associated with two key catastrophes: (1) a famine in the early 14th century; and (2) the Black Death in the mid-14th century. The first skull presents evidence of survival from severe cranial injury with highly probable surgical intervention. The second one presents evidence of successful skull surgery, confirming the practice of trepanation performed by a skilled specialist in a given region at a given time in history. Although both individuals had been robust enough to withstand the pain and strain of the treatment, indicating considerable resilience to survive the skull trauma, they succumbed to mass infection or famine that killed a large number of inhabitants of this prominent medieval mining region.

Design of mass burial sites for safe and dignified disposal of pandemic fatalities

The huge number of fatalities due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has imposed an unprecedented pressure on existing burial facilities. Thus, mass burial is being used in different parts of the world to cope with this unusual situation. As a dead body might be contagious for at least hours, if not days, there is a need to manage/design/construct the mass burial considering the safe handling of coffins and other environmental, social, economical and ethical/dignity aspects. However, the guidelines of the World Health Organization do not thoroughly address the potential risk associated with groundwater pollution due to mass burial construction. Hence, the present study discusses the potential risk of groundwater pollution in mass burial sites and sheds light on the factors that control the survival/retention of bacteria and viruses in porous media. Furthermore, using the available knowledge on designing/monitoring of municipal/industrial waste disposal sites, a cost-effective and simple construction method of mass burial is proposed to mitigate its potential environmental impact.

Geophysical Investigations of United States Revolutionary War Era (1777–1778) Mass Burial Sites in Pennsylvania, USA

The United States Revolutionary War (1775–1783) resulted in numerous mass burials in the eastern United States, with deaths occurring not just directly related to the battles fought, but also from disease, starvation, and exposure. Current information relating to these mass burials is often gathered from myths and rumors, leaving the truth of the historical aspects of that time period ambiguous. Geophysical techniques are increasingly utilized in archaeologic and forensic studies to locate unmarked burials. GPR, magnetics, and electrical resistivity have been used to successfully identify burial locations around the world in a non-invasive manner. This paper aims to illustrate how different burials of the US Revolutionary War period can be detected and characterized with geophysics, providing important knowledge of a better historical understanding of that time period, as well as optimizing equipment instrumentation and processing procedures for such targeted investigations. Three case studies of Revolutionary War Era mass burial sites in Pennsylvania, USA are described here: the Paoli Battlefield Memorial, the Old Charlestown Cemetery, and Saint Peter's Church in the Great Valley. These sites are within 9 km of each other and have historic records that suggest mass burials during this period. Results show GPR to provide the most useful data overall, with supporting information gathered from the supplemental geophysical techniques of magnetometry and resistivity. 2D profiles tend to provide a more valuable image of the subsurface than 3D slices. Larger burials leave a greater footprint and have a higher chance of causing a geophysical disturbance that can be measured more than 200 years after the burial. Soil moisture content and vegetation type can impact quality of results. Study implications demonstrate the challenges and potential usefulness of geophysical techniques to successfully locate and characterize mass burials of this time period.

Investigation of WWII/postwar mass burials in Croatia—The implementation of the Croatian model of searching for the imprisoned and missing persons

The search for victims of World War Two (WWII) and the immediate aftermath period (postwar) in Croatia started together with the search for Homeland War victims in 1991. It continued through years, most often sporadically and in a non-homogenous way. It was just with the adoption of the Law on Research, Arrangement and Maintenance of Military Cemeteries, Cemeteries of Victims of WWII and Postwar Period in 2013 that the search became more structured and gained a formal governmental body responsible for the organization and supervision of the activities related to it. It was then that the well-established model of searching for Homeland War victims, based on many years of field work and research, started to be implemented in the search and analysis of WWII/postwar victims. The model represents a continuously growing and developing project which encompasses a wide variety of steps and procedures, from the investigation of alleged burial locations to the analysis and reburial of recovered mortal remains. From its implementation in 2016, it allowed the successful investigation of 1300 alleged burial locations, 484 field surveys, 42 exhumations and the recovery of remains of more than 1600 individuals. Besides, care for military cemeteries, marking of mass burial sites and arranging of international treaties are conducted in order to guarantee proper handling, relocation and repatriation of all those that perished during WWII and the postwar period.

A Black Death mass grave at Thornton Abbey: the discovery and examination of a fourteenth-century rural catastrophe

Abstract

Prehistoric Coastal Mass Burials: Did Death Come in Waves?

Recent large tsunamis in the twenty-first century have provided graphic reminders of the catastrophic impacts such natural hazards can have upon coastal communities. Death tolls in the thousands give rise to the rapid adoption of coastal mass burials for the interment of the dead. While recognised as a necessary practice in the aftermath of such contemporary tragedies, the paucity of coastal mass burial sites related to earlier tsunamis reported in the archaeological record is unusual. We establish a suite of criteria for identifying the geological and archaeological evidence of inundation by past tsunamis and review case studies from two well-documented prehistoric coastal mass burial sites in the Southern Hemisphere (Solomon Islands and Vanuatu). To varying degrees, both sites possess numerous characteristics that suggest direct correlation with previously reported catastrophic palaeotsunamis. In the Northern Hemisphere, we investigate palaeotsunami inundation as an alternative hypothesis for mass burial sites in Orkney and Shetland, a relatively tectonically inactive region where such an association is unlikely to have ever been considered. The nature, chronology and location of these mass burial sites fit well with the proposed archaeological evidence for palaeotsunami inundation, and they also appear to be contemporaneous with the as-yet poorly documented Garth tsunami (~ 5500 years BP). We suggest that a potentially key diagnostic criterion for determining a palaeotsunami linkage is the use of diatom testing on skeletal remains to establish whether death was caused by drowning in saltwater, a test which has never been applied in this context.

Visages, lieux, héritiers. « L’archéologie mémorielle » du photographe Tomasz Kizny

The work of memorial archeology conducted by the photographer Tomasz Kizny (Gulag, Firefly Books, 2004; The Great Terror in the USSR from 1937 to 1938, Lausanne: Noir sur Blanc, 2013) is presented in three aspects: faces, places, heirs. Faces of the condemned captured by the photographic services of the Muscovite prisons of the NKVD a few days or even hours before execution ; killing or mass burial sites spread across the territories of the former USSR, and descendants of victims or memory pr...

Les nécropoles de la Terreur à Saint-Pétersbourg et ses environs de la fin des années 1980 à nos jours

In the late 1980s, work began to identify, study, and memorialize the mass burial sites of the victims of Soviet terror. According to official data alone, between 1918 and 1953 in Petrograd/Leningrad 58,000 people were executed for political reasons. A few sites of execution and burial have been identified so far, among which the Peter and Paul Fortress, Levashovo, and the Kovalevsky forest. This article is devoted to the history and analysis of these sites and their memorialization. In Levashovo more than 19,500 people were secretly buried, who had been executed or died in prison between 1937 and 1954. In 1989, city authorities declared this mass grave created by the NKVD the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of Political Repression. Since then, with the help of public organizations, more than 20 national or confessional monuments have been installed, as well as about 1000 personal memorial signs. In 2001, the society Memorial discovered the mass graves of the civil war in the Kovalevsky forest and placed a memorial sign ‘To the Victims of Red Terror’. In the Peter and Paul fortress, systematic archaeological study of the execution site near the Golovkin bastion has been under way since 2010 and has already exhumed the remains of 160 victims executed in the first years of the Soviet regime. But there is yet no agreement on the shape of a future memorial near the walls of the fortress.

Valuation of the stabilization plan for the foot-and-mouth disease burial sites

About 4,500 mass burial sites of carcasses from the 2010/2011 outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth (FMD) disease in Korea show very slow stabilization speed, although more than 3 years have passed. Therefore, a plan is being considered to boost the speed of stabilization or removal. This is a study on the social value of the removal plan for 4,500 mass burial sites from the 2010/2011 outbreak of FMD in Korea. This valuation is based on the survey of 1,000 people living all over Korea. Korean people have a willingness to pay 101.2 billion Korean Won (about US $100 million). This value is a large amount, but it is small compared to the cost of a FMD outbreak. The cost for the Korean government from 5 outbreaks since 2000 ranged from 28.8 billion Won to 3.2 trillion Won. These were the costs only paid by the Korean government. One estimate reported that there would be a total damage of 1.4 trillion Won, if FMD outbreak occurs in Jeju Islands, a small part of Korea. If burial sites have very slow stabilization speed and some hazardous contents, the social damage will exceed the removal cost.

Nationwide surveillance for pathogenic microorganisms in groundwater near carcass burials constructed in South Korea in 2010.

Widespread outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease and avian influenza occurred in South Korea during 2010. In response to the culling of many animals to attenuate the spread of disease, South Korea used mass burial sites to dispose of the large number of carcasses; consequently, concerns about groundwater contamination by leachate from these burial sites are increasing. Groundwater is one of the main sources of drinking water, and its cleanliness is directly related to public health. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the safety of groundwater around the burial sites (total of 600 sites). A total of 1,200 groundwater samples were collected though the country, and microbial analysis was conducted during two time periods: during the spring (n = 600; April to June 2012) and after rainfall (n = 600; August to October, 2012; fall). Fecal coliform and Escherichia coli were detected in 173 (14.4%) and 85 (7.1%) of the 1,200 samples, respectively. Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. each were detected only once (0.083%). Clostridium perfringens was detected from 7 groundwater samples (0.583%), and E. coli O157:H7 was not detected. With respect to norovirus, only the GII type was detected from six groundwater samples (0.5%), and enterovirus was detected in 15 groundwater samples (1.25%). The frequency of E. coli that we detected was lower than that found in previous studies conducted in South Korea, but we detected higher frequency of fecal coliform than that observed in a previous report. The contamination frequencies of Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. were very low, but C. perfringens, which could be an indicator of fecal pollution, was detected in seven regions. Overall, the results of the present study indicate a low possibility of contamination from burial sites. However, consistent monitoring is required to prevent microbial contamination of groundwater near the burial sites.

Carcass disposal and siting controversy: Risk, dialogue and confrontation in the 2001 foot-and-mouth Outbreak

This paper examines controversy during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak after mass carcass burial sites were selected at two sites in northeast England, and focuses on shortcomings in public consultation surrounding the carcass disposal policy. The slaughter of six million animals necessitated a national disposal strategy on a hitherto unknown scale. The belated decision to concentrate carcass disposal in a small number of mass burial sites provoked more opposition in the two ex-mining localities selected in the northeast than anywhere else. In both cases local liaison committees were established to manage dialogue between residents and public authorities. We argue that, although seen by the authorities primarily as a vehicle for risk communication and public reassurance, for residents these functioned chiefly as a vehicle for holding public authorities to account. These divergent purposes were overshadowed by the chaotic circumstances in which the early stages of the mass burial policy were implemented, and the way in which the carcass disposal policy was dictated by the operation of the slaughter policy, whose draconian form precluded any but the most cursory public consultation.