On the 26th of March, 2009, Adjunct Associate Lecturer Ian
Moffat gave a seminar entitled the Geophysical Detection of
Historic Graves. The seminar room was filled with forty-one (41)
fellow academics and students from the Department of
Archaeology. The seminar focused on the effects of geology on
current grave detecting methods such as the magnetometer and the
ground penetrating radar. There are three divisions of burials
or graves; the Indigenous, the Clandestine, and the Historic.
Ian’s case studies were focused on the latter division which
included the Selheim Cemetery (North Queensland), the Pioneer
Park Cemetery (Adelaide), the Encounter Bay Cemetery, and the
Meadows Cemetery (Adelaide Hills). The Selheim Cemetery was the
most successful of the four case studies with the rediscovery of
all thirty previously ‘lost’ burials. Both the Pioneer Park and
Meadows Cemeteries case studies produced good quality data but
the amount of time used was a minor setback. Geology and its
effect on burial data analysis wa