GPR to be used at Molokan Cemetery

Glendale Star - July 12, 2001 - pages 3,20
By GLENN SWAIN Editor

The Arizona Molokan Cemetery at Maryland and 75th avenues will soon be going under radar. Ground penetrating radar, or GPR, will be used later this month to locate unmarked graves. The University of Arizona has the only GPR service in Arizona, and can do the work for less than $1,000. The cost would rise from $2,000 to $3,000 if an out-of-state firm were hired. It is estimated the process will take a day to complete.

The cemetery will be marked in a grid, with scan lines marked on the surface every two and one-half to five feet [every meter].

Andrew Conovaloff made the GPR presentation to the Motokan community Sunday, and it agreed to fund the survey, which will establish order and straighten the rows of graves. Conovaloff said the survey will lead to an index of people buried there.

"We really haven't done that here," Conovaloff said. "It's been left-up to the guy who digs a hole. He looks around and gets a general idea where it's supposed to go. He said every once in a while, over the last couple decades, he would hit a grave where he wasn't expecting one."

Conovaloff said some children who died during the 1918 influenza epidemic could [are] be buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves. More than 600,000 Americans eventually died from the outbreak. [The back row is reported to be graves of children.]

GPR has been used in Iceland to detect bodies thought to still have traces of the virus. Scientists want to find the germ in hopes of producing a virus for a vaccine. [No Molokan graves will be exhumed for virus. They are too dry anyway.]

GPR is operated above ground level and produces cross-sectional images showing areas of disturbed soil and objects that are not soil. GPR is sometimes called a "drag box" because the process involves a technician slowly pulling a box on the ground. Inside the box is a microwave antennae and receiver. A computer collects and interprets the data received. Depending on the soil type and moisture content, GRP can locate a coffin, a person in a coffin, objects buried with the person, or the burial trench in which the coffin or body was placed. [In Glendale, unfortunately GPR will detect only down to about one meter or just over 3 feet deep. Coffins will not be detected, just the hole of disturbed soil.]

Molokans are sectarian Bible-centered Christians who evolved from Spiritual Christian Russian peasants who refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1600s. Spiritual Christians rejected the divinity of the Tsar and icons, Orthodox fasting, military killing, and other practices which they believed conflicted with the Bible.

The first use of the label "Molokan" appeared in the 1670s referring to those who ignored many of the 200 fasting days a year by drinking milk. Russian for milk is "'Moloko." Molokan means" milk-drinker."