COLLECTING HUMAN REMAINS
Forensic anthropologists rarely find skeletal remains that are aboveground. It is often a hiker, hunter, or some other civilian in a remote or uninhabited area who stumbles across the bones at a crime scene. Because the “evidence” has been found by untrained persons, securing the scene is the most effective way of initiating evidence protection. The subsequent searching of an area for bones is similar to processing other crime scenes, however, and proceeds as an orderly, careful search by trained personnel. This search may be aided by various detection methods, such as probes that detect the gases produced by decomposition, radar that penetrates into the ground, or even dogs trained to sniff for the smells of human decomposition, so-called cadaver dogs. If the remains are scattered, each bone fragment should be flagged or marked. This provides a view of the pattern of dispersal and where missing bones might lie. Context is even more important with skeletal remains and the individual bones should not be disturbed until the entire scene has been photographed and documented. All the bones on the surface, even animal bones, should be collected. Buried remains require more time and skill to retrieve, as pictured in Figure1. Archaeological techniques are employed to excavate buried skeletal materials and should be performed only by trained personnel under the supervision of an experienced archaeological excavator. A grid is set up with one point set as a datum, or reference point, from which all measurements originate. Each unit in the grid is excavated separately; they may be processed at the same time or done in series. Soil and materials are removed by a thin layer at a time (usually 2–5 cm) slowly exposing the buried items. Figure 2 shows how each bone is carefully delineated and cleaned in place to preserve the final position of the body. Only after the bones have all been found, excavated, photographed, and docu mented, they will be removed and transported for analysis. Sometimes, humans, animals, and nature are not kind enough to skeletal remains. A skull or bone may not be whole when recovered and it must be reconstructed prior to analysis. Thin wooden sticks and glue usually do the trick, although other means may need to be used depending on how damaged the bone is. Subsequent analyzes need to be kept in mind (carbon-14 dating, DNA, X-rays, etc.) to minimize any obstacles to their successful completion.
FIGURE 1 Some crime scenes are very similar to archaeological excavations, where shovels and trowels replace magnifying lenses and fingerprint powder. Professional archaeologists or forensic anthropologists are skilled at locating and removing buried remains and should be consulted before any digging starts.
FIGURE 2 To gain a clear picture of the body’s last resting position, it is useful to clean down to the bottom of the remains and then clear out all the soil around the bones. This process is called “pedestalling” the body.
