The identification of unmarked graves and burials is one of most common applications of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in archaeology. Despite a high frequency of use and a long history of experimentation, there appears to be considerable variability on what indicates a burial in GPR data—likely a consequence of heterogeneity in geological contexts, age and in burial practices. Although general statements about uncertainty in GPR interpretation may be acceptable in archaeological applications, the interpretative process becomes more complicated when GPR is used to locate unmarked graves in culturally, politically and legally contested locations such as at former Indian Residential Schools (IRSs) in Canada. In this paper, we review international applications of the technique and identify trends and traits between the authors' use of GPR to identify burials. By categorizing the studies based on the GPR reflection signatures identified, our review demonstrates that there is modest consensus across the 77 documents reviewed for what represents a burial. Interrogating these findings, we identify a range of potential contributors to signal heterogeneity and outline potential steps forward to a higher confidence or more statistically robust identification of unmarked graves using GPR.

中文翻译：

---

探地雷达中埋葬信号解读的挑战

识别无标记的坟墓和墓葬是探地雷达 (GPR) 在考古学中最常见的应用之一。尽管使用频率很高且实验历史悠久，但探地雷达数据中表明埋藏的内容似乎存在相当大的差异，这可能是地质背景、年龄和埋葬实践中的异质性的结果。尽管关于探地雷达解释不确定性的一般性陈述在考古应用中可能是可以接受的，但当探地雷达用于在文化、政治和法律上有争议的地点（例如加拿大前印第安寄宿学校（IRS））定位无标记坟墓时，解释过程变得更加复杂。在本文中，我们回顾了该技术的国际应用，并确定了作者使用探地雷达识别墓葬的趋势和特征。通过根据确定的探地雷达反射特征对研究进行分类，我们的审查表明，在审查的 77 份文件中，对于代表埋葬的内容存在一定程度的共识。通过询问这些发现，我们确定了信号异质性的一系列潜在因素，并概述了使用探地雷达对无标记坟墓进行更高置信度或更可靠的统计识别的潜在步骤。