Geoscents - fusing the best of both worlds

Chapter 3: A dog's sense of smell - doing what no technique as yet can do

Geoscents - fusing the best of both worlds

A dog's sense of smell - doing what no technique as yet can do

Fabel, the archaeology dog, is an expert at locating buried human bones. Archaeologist Sophie Vallulv is his trainer. In order to speed up the search, Fabel was brought to Sandby Borg to locate the buried remains before the excavation team arrived. Strapped to his back was a Zeno 20 using the Esri® ArcGIS.

The idea came about when archaeologists began thinking how they could record Fable’s search pattern while still in the field. Previously Sophie had to remember where Fabel had searched and where he hadn't. When he discovered bones, Sophie would stick a white flag in wherever Fabel dug.

Because of Sandby Borg’s size, it was extremely difficult to remember everywhere the dog went. Archaeologists, Nicholas Nilsson and Fredrik Gunnarsson at Kalmar Läns Museum, suggested building a harness for Fabel and putting the Zeno 20 in it.

“We tried it in the field and it works fantastic,” says Sophie, “It’s the perfect device for Fabel, thanks to its lightweight and accuracy.”

“I thought about buying a regular hunting dog GPS device but the accuracy varied from 1 to 5 meters, which is extremely bad for documentation purposes. The Zeno 20 is capable of achieving 1 centimetre accuracy without an external antenna,” explains Sophie.

Explore next chapter: A story starts to take shape

Story: Geoscents - fusing the best of both worlds
Chapter 1: So little time, so much to do
Chapter 2: Improve, simplify and communicate
Chapter 3: A dog's sense of smell - doing what no technique as yet can do
Chapter 4: A story starts to take shape

Reporter 76

Download your own PDF edition of the "Reporter 76" here.
Download your own PDF edition of the "Reporter 76" here.

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