37-14 Kansas’ Hidden Coffins: Creating gprMax Computer Model Simulations for Interpreting Cemetery Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) Data in Kansas

Session: Geoscience Research Poster Showcase by 2YC and 4YCU Undergraduate Students

Poster Booth No.: 137

Presenting Author:

Nikodemos Scott

Authors:

Scott, Nikodemos My'Joi D'Andre¹, Schneider, Blair Benson², Alves Borges, Ayla ³

(1) Piedmont Virginia Community College, Palmyra, VA, USA, (2) Kansas Geological Survey, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA, (3) Kansas Geological Survey, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA,

Abstract:

Throughout the 1800’s, Kansas was a crossroads for Americans in search of new lives. Being located in the center of the country led to numerous cultures, religions, social classes, and races coming together in the same region, which resulted in burial practices combining as communities formed.  Thanks to new railroads, westward migration, and evolving societal norms, Native Americans, white Europeans, and African Americans crossed paths in a few key Kansas cities, but diseases and hardships of migration led to a spike in deaths. If the deceased could be buried in a cemetery, the direction of burial, headstone placement and styling, casket use and type, and coffin sizes all varied drastically between these groups. Studying burials can shed light on how societal norms and cultural practices evolved during this time.  

 Many burials in the US cannot be excavated due to preservation laws. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)  is a tool geologists and archaeologists can use to scan the subsurface to find buried targets. Using electromagnetic waves, the GPR will receive waves reflected back from anything different than the surrounding soil. GPR has been successfully utilized for finding burial sites, but there’s less research on the application of GPR in cemeteries in clayey soils, like those found in Kansas. The reason is poor signal strength in dense soil. As coffins age and the wood rots, they can fall in on themselves, distorting readings. These factors combined create data interpretation challenges. Our goal was to create numerous computer simulation models of expected GPR readings from a casket as it collapses using a program called gprMAX. Model results are then compared to actual GPR readings from Valencia Cemetery in Valencia, Kansas, to investigate if 19th-century burials at this cemetery used caskets and, if so, to interpret their conditions and states of decay.

I used the models to generate the collapsing coffin GPR readings in different scenarios that could impact the data, including burial depth, casket collapse state, and GPR antenna frequencies. My models are based on soil composition data from Valencia Cemetery.  With this methodology, we can interpret burial-site GPR scans of archaeological settings accurately using noninvasive methods. This work was conducted as part of the Geo-Launchpad internship program, supported by the NSF NGF operated by EarthScope Consortium.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-22426

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