I'm Dr Caroline Sturdy Colls, I'm a lecturer in Forensic Investigation at Staffordshire University
I work with in the forensic and crime science department and my area of
expertise is forensic archaeology
and I also do consultancy for various UK Police forces
i was fortunate enough to work with two lecturers at the University of Birmingham where
i did my degree who were practicing
forensic archaeologists and this was a subject
that i didn't even know existed until i
met them and they were very kind and took me
out on case work from very early on in my
university career, so essentially then 
I went on to a masters, PHD
umm... and specialise in a particular
branch of archaeology, holocaust
archaeology but very much drawing on the
techniques from forensic archaeology
in terms of searching for mass graves
because of the fact that there are these
sensitivities involved in the
investigation of these sites that my work is entirely non-invasive so we
don't do any excavation at the sites we've been investigating
So we're using other techniques, so we're starting  right at the beginning, desk based assessment 
re-looking at historical material
aerial photography, looking a
photographic records witness testimonies
and plans right the way through to then infield
survey, measured survey, geophysical survey
which is capable of mapping below the ground. So this is probably very
different from most people's
impressions of archaeology
It is also an emerging field in terms of applying these techniques to
the holocaust. They are very widely used in other areas of archaeology
but because of the sensitivities in the
past
either these investigations haven't been
undertaken
or they've involved excavation and
sometimes that has caused problems
in terms of particularly Jewish Halakha law
which prevents the disturbance of
human remains
It's taught me a lot ten and hopefully
contributed to the narrative of the
holocaust
in terms of finding physical evidence to either
support or challenge what we think
we know so far. So at Treblinka is a site where people thought
there were no surviving remains, that the
Nazis had been successful in eradicating
all traces of the camp, we found a number
of buried structures, we found traces
of the original camp boundary, we found
evidence of mass graves at the site and
cremation pits, at Staro Sajmište in Belgrade we've managed to map
a lot of the surviving buildings which now
are incorporated into residential areas,
mechanics workshop, restaurants
even and we've gone back and really
deconstructed the history of the site to 
look a what survives now and try
hopefully inact a memorial plan for that
particular site which isn't
commemorated at the moment in terms of the
actual demarcation of the sites
I suppose the lack of closure for a lot
of people even after all this time the
holocaust is still living memory some people either knew the
people who were lost in the holocaust
or some are third maybe even fourth generation, but it still affects them.
So if archaeology can do anything then i hope it really is to try and
provide closure for the families by giving them
a concrete place to actually go and
mourn by finding the mass graves and
finding the sites and hoping therefore that we
pass it on to future generations as well
to continue to remember
