GROUND PENETRATING RADAR SURVEY OF THE HISTORIC CEMETERIES AT THE NATHAN BOONE HOMESTEAD STATE HISTORIC SITE, SOUTHWEST MISSOURI

The Nathan Boone Homestead State Historic Site is located two miles north of Ash Grove, Missouri, in section 9 of T30N R24W. The NBHSHS was established in 1991 when the state acquired the Boone farmstead and surrounding property. The site contains the Boone Family House, Boone Family Cemetery, and the African American Cemetery. This farmstead was originally the home of Nathan Boone (youngest son of Daniel Boone), his family, and their slaves. The Boone house (Figure 2), which still stands, is the main focus of NBHSHS interpretation. It was originally a dog-trot log cabin that was built in the 1830’s by Nathan Boone, his sons, and probably his slaves.

The focus of study is on the Boone Family Cemetery and the African American Cemetery. It is unknown how many burials each cemetery contains and the exact locations. The purpose of this survey is to aid Missouri State Parks in managing and preserving identified subsurface remains and to evaluate the effectiveness of a GPR survey within SW Missouri. The goals of this project is to delineate the burial locations and boundaries of the each cemetery, locate and identify any possible archaeological features near cemeteries, and provide a new case study of rigorous archaeological use of GPR in southwest Missouri that assess the utility of GPR in Ozarks archaeology. This study utilized a RAMAC monostatic GPR system using 250 MHz and 500 MHz antennae which provides depth penetration to a maximum of 2 meters. Profiles were collected along from North to South on the Boone Family Cemetery and South to North on the African American Cemetery at 0.5 meters spacing. Each profile was processed using standards algorithms (e.g., dewowing, background removal, filtering). The preliminary analysis of the data does not indicate any evidence for structural anomalies outside of the fenced area of the cemeteries.