Underwater Archaeology at DPAA: Efforts to Address U.S. Military Loss Incidents

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A significant portion of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)'s unresolved loss cases involve incidents that occurred over water, at sea, or otherwise within a body of water. In the context of underwater forensic archaeology, addressing these cases require a complex process of historical and archival research; large-scale GIS analysis; investigation and correlation with known incidents; and site search, survey, and recovery activities to the extent possible. The end goal is to recover and identify the remains of unaccounted for individuals, or to otherwise resolve their fate. These efforts increasingly require a high degree of collaboration and coordination with individual historians and researchers, non-profit groups, universities, and academic organizations; local, state, and federal agencies; and foreign host nations and international organizations. DPAA continues to develop its underwater procedures and capabilities in its pursuit of this challenging mission.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25448