Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Utilization Of Gis In Tracking Disinterment And Movement Of Unknown Us Wwii War Dead: Foundations For A Geospatial Approach To Addressing Commingled Remains, Ella Axelrod

Anthropology Department: Theses

In the aftermath of World War II, the US was faced with the monumental task of finding and identifying over 405,000 service members who did not survive the conflict (McDermott, 2005, p. 1). Of these 405,000, 81,000 remain missing and 2,498 remain unidentified in cemeteries across Europe alone (American Battle Monuments Commission, 2022). Often, these individuals were interred and disinterred multiple times, crossing the continent in the journey from loss incident or battlefield to their final resting place. Commingling, the accidental mixing of remains, is an ever-present concern in the forensic identification of individuals from mass casualty incidents (Belcher et …