From Sky to Soil: Combining Drones and Geophysical Techniques to Locate Unmarked Burials in Sinking Spring Cemetery, Abingdon, VA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Sinking Spring Cemetery in Abingdon, VA founded in 1773, is divided into “colored” and “white” areas. The traditionally white cemetery, marked with a Virginia State Historic Marker sign, is nine acres and has easy access from the road, neatly walled family plots, walking paths, and well-preserved stones for individual burials. The African American cemetery is two acres, with only a handful of stones and no historical markers, roads, or pathways. We have surveyed the entire African cemetery with ground-based geophysics (ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and electromagnetic induction) and thermal, multispectral, and LiDAR sensors from Unmanned Aerial Systems. Unmarked graves were most reliably detected with thermal imaging except beneath tree canopy, where LiDAR and geophysics help fill in the gaps. The major finding of this study is the success of thermal imaging to detect these graves. Even data collected during daylight hours shows the graves, which goes against recommendations in the literature. Combing all the data produces a highly detailed map showcasing hundreds of burials.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53977