Getting the Job Done: Case Resolution in the Field, from Investigation through Recovery, at Site GM-05585, a Low-Angle B-17G Crash Site in Sachsen Anhalt, Germany.

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.

The DPAA case resolution process involves a number of important steps that occur before a recovery team is sent into the field to excavate an incident site, and typically includes a combination of historic research, witness interviews, field investigations, and archaeological survey. The goal of this process is to identify and formally evaluate each potential recovery target, which serves to establish well-defined excavation objectives. In addition, the specific attributes of each site are continually revealed in more detail with every successive field effort.

The sustained investigation and recovery work conducted at Site GM-05585, associated with the loss of a B-17G bomber over Germany in November of 1944, provides an excellent example of this iterative process, during which the site was transformed from a simple dot on a map to a well-defined archaeological entity, detailed through the integration of high-resolution field data and historic aerial imagery. Following field investigation work conducted in 2010 and 2011, which led to the initial identification of the low-angle site, Site GM-05585 was successfully excavated and closed during the course of three recovery missions conducted during 2015 and 2016. These efforts led to the subsequent identification of several missing U.S. service members.

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): 24947