Competent recovery and analysis of human remains is an essential component of death investigations. Archaeological field excavation methods can be adapted for various outdoor recoveries involving decomposed, mummified, burned, or otherwise compromised human remains.
This is a one-day course focused on the identification of human skeletal remains recovered from various indoor and outdoor forensic contexts. Participants will handle skeletal remains exhibiting trauma, thermal damage, and environmental degradation. Real forensic case studies will be presented to underscore the importance of skeletal analysis in the death investigation.
Topics of discussion and training will include:
- Basic elements of the biological profile (estimation of age, sex, stature, etc.)
- Human/non-human bone identification
- Interpretation of traumatic injury to the skeleton (e.g., blunt force, sharp force, gunshot wounds, thermal damage)
- Postmortem interval (“time since death”) effects on the human skeleton
- Northern New England specific environmental alterations to bone
- Excavation methods/identifying remains in the field
