The Complexities of Managing Global Forensic Archaeology with Differing Archaeological Entities, including CRM Firms, Private NGOs, University Researchers, and Field Schools in the Search for Missing US Servicemen.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is a US DoD organization that has the awesome responsibility of conducting and managing world-wide forensic archaeological excavations to recover missing US military servicemen from past conflicts. The DPAA-Lab (which traces back to 1947) has the sole forensic authority to make positive identifications of missing servicemen from past accounting as granted by US Code, Title X. Its forensic archaeology operational tempo is largely-scoped, having processed 204 sites around the globe in the fiscal year 2018. A recent Congressional mandate to increase our optempo required DPAA to look outside our organic capacity to contract some of our archaeological activities to external entities as a force-multiplier. Having only partial decision-making control over which kinds of entities are contracted, the DPAA-Lab must train, manage, oversee (and be responsible for) all agency forensic archaeology activities, including those conducted by external partners that have no previous experience in working within the forensic medico-legal paradigm. The performance results have been disparate and extremely challenging. While the archaeological fundamentals and methods may appear similar, the most challenging differences have been forensic traceability, transparency, and defensibility. The hard lesson for some is that not all archaeologists can transition easily to forensic archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25245