being analyzedbut were there other tombs on the site and could the dogs help locate themafter that first preliminary search and its surprising result dr glava had beers at a local pub with the dogs handlers they decided to hold off any discussion for a few weekswe needed to think a little bit about what just happened dr glava saidimagecreditzlatko balaimagecreditvedrana glavaimagecreditvedrana glavathat test run was the beginning of a careful study on whether humanremains detection dogs could be an asset to archaeologists setting up a controlled study was difficult dr glava had to learn the scientific literature such as scent theory far outside the standard confines of archaeology the same was true for ms pintar and the field of archaeologythe training challenges were also difficult ancient human remains probably present a different and fainter scent profile than more recently deceased cadavers especially as decades turn into centuries and then millenniums false negatives seemed likely to occuri think dogs are really capable of this but i think its a logistical challenge said adee schoon a scentdetectionanimal expert from the netherlands who was not involved in the study its not something you can replicate again and again its hard to trainand as dr schoon noted dogs are great anomaly detectors something as subtle as recently disturbed soil can elicit a false alert from a dog that is not rigorously trainednonetheless the team returned to the necropolis for the first controlled tests in september 2015 and again a full year later both times they used all four of ms pintar and mr nikolis cadaver dogs panda mali a third belgian malinois and a german shepherd they worked them on both known and doubleblind searches in areas where nobody knew if tombs were locatedthe dogs located four tombs new to the archaeologists dr glava had suspected that a fifth site might hold a burial chest and the dogs alerts combined with excavation proved her suspicion correctin september 2019 the journal of archaeological method and theory published the results of their study this research has demonstrated that hrd dogs are able to detect very small amounts of specific human decomposition odor as well as to indicate to considerably older burials than previously assumed dr glava and ms pintar wrotedr schoon who researches and helps create protocols to train scentdetection animals worldwide said the iron age necropolis study was nicely designed and really controlledarchaeological cold casespanda and mali arent the only dogs in the world that have helped locate human archaeological remains in the united states human remains detection dogs have aided discoveries at a variety of native american sites some badly damaged by looters and earlier generations of archaeologists with less ethical approaches to excavation as well as by development and agriculturepaul martin a dog handler and trainer in tennessee who is finishing his doctorate in earth sciences and geoarchaeology at the university of memphis has studied using dogs to find older remains for nearly two decades demonstrating their capabilities at some of the