"Same Same, but Different": Considerations and Approaches to Archaeology within the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The recently formed Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has been assigned the task of providing the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel from past conflicts. This scope, which includes World War II through the end of the Vietnam War, represents approximately 83,000 missing U.S. service members associated with air, ground, and maritime losses that are worldwide in distribution. The accounting effort is conducted within a forensic anthropological context; however, considering the age of the individual loss events, which occurred approximately 40 to 75 years ago, archaeological methods play a critical role in the recovery and identification process. There are also differences in the considerations and objectives of DPAA archaeology versus those of academia and cultural resource management. The goal of this symposium is to provide a general introduction to the archaeology of the agency while exploring some of the agency-specific considerations of method and theory in actual practice.