Forensic archaeology
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Forensic archaeology is the application of archaeological techniques and approaches in the legal field, normally the enforcement of criminal law.
Forensic archaeologists have been employed by police to excavate grave sites in order to reconstruct the events that took place prior to the burial of murder victims. Excavating a grave under archaeological conditions can provide valuable evidence on the manner of death, how long the grave was open, the tools used, how long it would have taken to create and even the time of year that it was dug.
Archaeologists use a number of techniques that can be useful in locating and analysing crime sites such as geophysical prospecting, site recording and palaeopathology and although all these disciplines are followed by others, they can provide trained staff skilled in all these fields at crime scenes. Before forensic archaeology, it was more common for police to dig out a grave hurriedly in pursuit of the body without looking more closely at its context.
As well as being used in individual murder cases, forensic archaeologists have been employed by international organisations like the UN to excavate war crime or genocide graves at several sites in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Iraq.
External link
Solving The Osteological Conundrum Of Buried Human Remains: What can your local archaeologist offer? (http://www.soton.ac.uk/~jb3/forearc2.html)
