Karen Supak, program manager of GBI’s Cultural Resource Services program, recently had an exciting experience at the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) Job Fair in March. That Karen is a self-proclaimed lover of dogs made it all the more gratifying that she was given the opportunity to help train some historic human remains detection dogs from the Institute for Canine Forensics (ICF).
Karen first learned of ICF at last year’s SCA meeting in Riverside, California. “I noticed that there was this one table that had dogs, like, literal dogs at their tables. So, of course, I make a beeline to their table,” she explains. “And it turned out that they are the Institute for Canine Forensics. And, they have dogs that are trained specifically to do historic human remains detection work.
“I was super interested in what these folks were doing with the dogs, and how that fed into things like cemetery delineation, which is frequently really difficult. It doesn’t matter how many fences you have around a cemetery. There’s always somebody buried outside the fence. And that’s the kind of work that these dogs do. They help to delineate or find graves where maybe there isn’t a headstone or maybe there’s not a fence around that cemetery.” Karen found the group again at last year’s meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans, where they presented on work they did at the Vicksburg National Military Park when the Civil War cemetery started to collapse at the Mississippi River.
Representing GBI’s cultural resources program, Karen was delighted to see ICF at the SCA job fair, and struck up a conversation with Ronda Bowser, one of the trainers. It occurred to Karen that in her crate of materials for the job fair, she had her personal trowel that she’d used on many archaeological sites, most recently at a historic cemetery. She proposed using the trowel, which still had dirt on it from the dig, to see if the dogs could track it. “Ronda lit up. She was just super excited. And I’m thinking to myself, I just want to watch these dogs work.”
From there, they set a plan into motion. “About an hour before the job fair started, I got this stuff, set up GBI’s table. Ronda and I agreed that I would set up the table in an area that naturally would trap the scent. We agreed that I would put my trowel in the crate in the corner. As I was unpacking, I realized that I had my soil color guide, which had been with me in historic cemeteries since the mid-nineties. I knew that it would probably also have some scent, but probably less scent on it than the trowel that still has dirt on it. So I put that in a chair, underneath the table just to see whether or not the dogs could catch that.
“Once we got a dog over to the general area, Rhonda would let the dog go, and tell the dog to search. We did this with four different dogs. Every single one of them immediately went to the trowel. They continued to work the area, found the soil guide on the chair, but continued to go back to the trowel because they are trained to identify the location of the strongest scent because scent travels.”
The ICF trainers were extremely excited to have a different context in which to train the dogs, who seldom work indoors. This was an independent test of how well they could track indoors. In addition, one of the dogs was able to work through its social anxiety. “You could see that dog really kind of fighting their anxiety over the increasing numbers of people that were coming into the room. And still, that dog was so intent on working that the dog was able to push through that anxiety.
“It was fascinating to watch the dogs do this and to watch each come through. So, yeah, that was probably the big highlight of my whole SCA job fair. And the whole time, I’m thinking that this is just fun for me.”
Fun it may be, but this kind of canine work can have real benefits to forensic investigation of crime or disaster sites, and can also be invaluable in examining historical sites. Now, GBI’s cultural resources program doesn’t work with dogs (though you’re likely to find a few lounging around our offices). But this activity demonstrates how nonprofit organizations can support one another and benefit from collaboration. Those of us working in the fields of cultural and natural resources represent a community and there is much we can learn from each other. Even if what is learned is a little unusual, as when Adela Morris (who took these photos) informed Karen, “I hate to break it to you, lady, but you’ve got dead people on your trowel.”
Learn more about the Institute for Canine Forensics: https://www.icfk9.org/
Learn more about the Society for California Archaeology : https://www.scahome.org/
