Archaeology and forensic death investigations.

The archaeology of contemporary mass graves.

The excavation of mass graves provides information and documentation for both human rights work and for forensic medico-legal investigations. Medico-legal documentation for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is a major reason for recent excavation of large mass graves in these countries. The mass grave ...

Drug Related Deaths in Tehran, Iran: Toxicological, Death and Crime Scene Investigations

Background: To determine the role of drugs in fatal overdose, analyses were done on samples obtained from autopsy examination and death and crime scene investigations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of toxicology analyses of postmortem biological and non-biological samples belonging to a subject in determining the forensic cause of death. Methods: Toxicological analysi...

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors Involved in the Preservation of Non-Adult Skeletal Remains in Archaeology and Forensic Science

Human skeletal remains offers the most direct insight into the health, well-being, and the lifestyles of both past and modern populations, as well as the study of violence and traumas encountered both from archaeological and forensic contexts. They also allow archaeologists and anthropologists to reconstruction demographic details, none more so than those of children, where mortality rates were...

Sex determination of juvenile skeletal remains is a problematic area affecting physical anthropology, forensic science and archaeology. Sexual dimorphism in the morphometric crown traits of the deciduous dentition

Clarifying the role of forensic anthropologists in death investigations.

Although their customary role is the identification of decomposed human remains, forensic anthropologists are frequently called upon to provide evidence for or to testify about the circumstances that surrounded a particular death. The literature is ambiguous and contradictory about the role of anthropologists in death investigations. Relying upon traditional distinctions, we present three cases...