Forensics (Other Keyword)
1-5 (5 Records)
Archaeological research on 538 MIA’s from WWII has been ongoing on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa over the past two years under the auspices of History Flight, an NGO. Tarawa, one of the bloodiest WWII battles in the Pacific, still has hundreds of MIA’s unaccounted for in one of the most densely populated locations on earth. History Flight, with the collaboration of professionals, para-professionals, military volunteers, DOD and the local community have been successful in locating and recovering...
Artifact or Evidence? The Role of Material Culture at War-Related Forensic Recovery Scenes (2017)
Artifact collection and analysis is a foundation of all archaeological research, and the methods used to record and draw meaning from the material culture we encounter on archaeological sites are generally standardized across subdisciplines. But field decisions about what to keep, what to disregard, and how to record and quantify it all are invariably informed, to some extent, by our research goals. When it comes to war-related sites excavated by U.S. Department of Defense teams with the...
Forensic Archaeology: A Global Perspective (2015)
Forensic archaeology is mostly defined as the use of archaeological methods and principles within a legal context. However, such a definition only covers one aspect of forensic archaeology and misses the full potential this discipline has to offer. This paper will focus on the perception of forensic archaeology as practiced in different countries, intergovernmental organisations or NGO’s. It will show that the practice of forensic archaeology differs worldwide as a result of diverse historical,...
Going to the Dogs: Forensic Canine Surveys at Mission San Antonio de Padua, California (2015)
Two surveys by the Institute of Canine Forensics were conducted at Mission San Antonio de Padua (1771-1834) in 2013. The first was a traditional field survey around the outside of the mission cemetery and in other areas known to contain more recent human burials. The second was a survey of the archaeological collections of the archaeological field school (1776-2004), in a completely new application of this method. Dogs specially trained and certified in historic human remains detection...
Using GIS to Re-Associate Commingled Skeletal Remains (2015)
One problem forensic archaeologists have encountered during the investigation of mass graves is the commingling of human remains. Commingling can consist of disarticulated body parts, and can be more complex when remains are skeletonized or fragmented. Methods exist to address this problem; however, some are costly while others are time consuming. It has been shown that mapping the three dimensional location of body parts in a mass grave is useful for re-association based on proximity of the...