African American communities are in an immediate need of ancestry recognition of unidentified burial sites in cemeteries across the Houston area. GWB’s “Dignity in Depth” project is assisting in the refurbishment of three historic African American cemeteries. This work is providing substantial benefit to families and communities by building respectful relationships among community groups, institutions, and geoscientists working toward cemetery restoration.
The project will use near surface geophysical methods such as metal detectors, EMP, magnetics, GPR, GPS and EM techniques to aid in the identification of unmarked burial locations.
Field trip participants will get an opportunity to attend a 2-hour introduction to this project at the University of Houston, describing the goal and approach of the project, how to connect to the community, and logistics for the field work. The attendees will be transported to the first cemetery to see what impact of work looks like for the local community. Later, the participants will arrive at the second cemetery to carry out measurements and data acquisition. Attendees will later return to University of Houston to visualize the data acquired and understand from previous engagements how the data is processed to aid in the visualization and identification of unmarked burial sites.