What could have been misconstrued as an overzealous pig roast actually did involve dead pigs -- along with a house fire, 10 students in white work suits and a $300,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice.

A wood-frame house along Route 980 in Cecil, Washington County, was burned to the ground Tuesday, with dead pigs inside, to test how archaeological methods can be used to improve arson investigations.

The Mercyhurst College's Forensic Anthropology team then spent two days sifting through charred remains to gather telltale clues about the two culled pigs that were euthanized before being placed inside the house.

Some of the pigs' bones were smashed or marked with knife and saw blades. The bodies, knives, guns and shell-casings were placed throughout the house, before the structure was set ablaze under the watchful eye of the Cecil Township Volunteer Fire Department.

Thursday and Friday, the team of 10 students in Mercyhurst College's Forensic and Biological Anthropology master's degree program, systematically sifted through the charred ruble to gather evidence, including bones for analysis in the college laboratory to determine what types of wounds were involved and how they were made.

The ultimate goal? To produce a map of where the pig bodies, weapons, shell casings and other evidence were situated inside the house prior to the fire.

Besides training students, the investigation also allowed Dennis Dirkmaat, chairman of the college's Applied Forensic Science Department, to test methods of arson investigation for the National Institute of Justice.

"You should use archaeological methods to document or place things in a sequence of events and determine how they are related," Dr. Dirkmaat said. "It doesn't matter if it happened 10,000 years ago or 10 days ago -- you have to carefully understand how things are related, one to the other.

"If you carefully expose the evidence, there is a lot more information that can be gathered," he said.

With three such mock investigations completed and up to seven more being planned in Canada and Pennsylvania, Dr. Dirkmaat is developing guidelines for gathering and documenting evidence that accurately reflects where they had been located before the fire.

The institute of justice will use the research to develop standards for investigating devastating fires involving human remains. Such standards don't currently exist, Dr. Dirkmaat said.

An advance team from Mercyhurst placed the weapons, evidence and pig carcasses inside the house and mapped their placement before igniting the fire.

On Thursday, the crime-scene recovery team including Dr. Dirkmaat, Mercyhurst Forensic Laboratory Director Luis Cabo and students from the college's master's degree program in Forensic and Biological Anthropology began gathering evidence and mapping where within the floor plan it had been found.

Laboratory tests will be done to help determine whether bones were smashed or cut, and with what weapon.

Tedious effort is necessary to solve the difficult puzzle. In this case, the answers will be revealed after the investigation is complete. The method will help determine which investigative techniques are most reliable and efficient.

"It is exciting to apply the things you learn in the classroom to something like this," said Christina Fojas, a second-year master's degree student from Eastchester, N.Y. "You find out what things worked and what didn't, and you try to improve."

The previous weekend the team conducted a similar investigation in Erie County after the advance team burned down a double-wide mobile home with dead pigs inside.

Dr. Cabo said students overlooked only one shell casing but did recover the other casings, along with knives, guns and pig bones. They were able to accurately map out where the items were situated prior to the fire.

Robert Ryhal, a retired state trooper and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Arson Investigators, witnessed the team's progress in Cecil and noted its importance to the future of forensic science.

He said he hopes Dr. Dirkmaat's research will help prove that more manpower is needed to conduct such investigations when compared with what law-enforcement agencies currently provide.

"The courts require that investigations follow scientific methodology, and what Dr. Dirkmaat is doing will comply with that," Mr. Ryhal said. "Hopefully his study will be well received."

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