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Applications
Cemetery mapping and unmarked graves
Burial grounds lose their records. Markers are moved, wooden ones rot, registers burn, and ground that looks empty very often is not. Radar maps what is there without anybody putting a spade in the ground.
What we are actually detecting
This is the part that matters most, and it is where the method is most often oversold. Ground-penetrating radar does not detect human remains. What it detects is the grave shaft — soil that was dug out and put back, which settles differently and holds moisture differently from the undisturbed ground around it. On a radar section that disturbance shows as a break in the natural soil layering, often with the straight sides and squared base of a cut.
Where a vault, a brick lining, a stone slab or an intact coffin is present, the reflection is far stronger and the interpretation far more confident. Where a burial was made directly into soil without a container, a century or more ago, in ground that has had a long time to re-consolidate, the evidence may be faint. In acidic soils it may be close to nothing.
What an absence of signal does not mean
No radar survey can prove a plot is empty. A grave can be too old, too shallow, too deep, too disturbed by later activity or too similar to the surrounding soil to register. Conductive clay can shorten useful penetration to a couple of feet regardless of what lies beneath it.
We state this on every drawing we issue, because the cost of the opposite is severe. A report that reads as proof of vacant ground is how a burial gets disturbed, and no survey of this kind should ever be used on its own to authorize excavation where a burial is possible.
What the ground decides
Conditions govern what is recoverable, and we would rather tell you that before mobilizing than afterwards. Sandy and well-drained soils give the clearest results. Heavy wet clay attenuates the signal badly. Mature tree roots, modern fill, regraded ground, rubble, utilities crossing the site and closely spaced monuments all complicate collection and interpretation.
On sites where radar alone is unlikely to be sufficient, we will say so and propose magnetics or resistivity alongside it, both of which respond to different properties and can corroborate a weak radar anomaly.
How we work on a burial ground
Nothing is excavated, probed or disturbed. The antenna is towed or pushed across the surface and the ground is left as we found it. Where monuments are tight or the ground is uneven we work on foot with closer line spacing rather than force a cart through.
We collect a grid — orthogonal passes at close, fixed spacing, positioned to real survey control — because a plan of the burial ground is the point, not a handful of profiles. The grid supports time-slicing, where the volume is cut horizontally at successive depths so shaft outlines appear in plan at the depth they occupy. Typical grave shafts are small targets, so line spacing is set tight enough that a shaft cannot pass between two lines unseen.
Who commissions this work
- Cemetery associations and boards mapping what they hold, and confirming which plots remain genuinely available before they are sold
- Churches, synagogues and burial societies with incomplete or lost registers
- Municipalities and townships responsible for abandoned or neglected burial grounds
- Historical and genealogical societies, and descendant communities, locating graves that were never marked or whose markers are long gone
- Archaeologists and cultural resource consultants needing a non-invasive survey ahead of their own work
- Landowners and developers establishing whether a suspected burial ground extends into a proposed work area
Equipment and capability
- 400 MHz antennas for typical grave depths
- 100 – 200 MHz antennas for deeper or older interments
- Close-spaced 3D grid collection and depth time-slicing
- GNSS and robotic total station control, tied to monuments and plot corners
- Magnetics and resistivity where radar alone is not enough
- Attributed CAD and GIS deliverables for cemetery records
What you receive
A plan of the surveyed ground showing each located anomaly with its extent, orientation, approximate depth, and — stated explicitly, one by one — our confidence that it represents a grave. Probable, possible and uncertain are different findings and we do not merge them into a single symbol.
The radar sections are included so the interpretation can be checked rather than taken on trust. Results are delivered in CAD or GIS where they are going into cemetery records, and we are glad to present them directly to a board, a congregation or a descendant group where that is wanted.
Ask before you commission
Tell us the ground, the age of the burials and what you need to decide, and we will say whether radar answers it, whether it needs a second method alongside, or whether something else entirely is the better route. That conversation is free and it is usually short.