2. What is Forensic Anthropology?
Forensic anthropology is the application of anatomical science of
anthropology and its various subfields.
A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased
individuals whose remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated or
otherwise unorganizable.
3. How does this work?
Forensic anthropologist use regression equations to determine sex, age,
status and race of skeletal remains.
Regression equations are mathematical equations developed from
studies of bones individuals of known sex, age, race and stature and are
used to predict such things of even fragmentary skeletal remains.
4. Anthropology case study
Forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of
Natural History find answers to a colonial cold case
The boy does not have a name, but he is not unknown.
Smithsonian scientists reconstructed his story from a
skeleton, found in Anne Arundel County, Maryland,
buried underneath a layer of fireplace ash, bottle and
ceramic fragments, and animal bones.
5. Resting on top of the rib cage was the milk pan
used to dig the grave. "It's obviously some sort of
clandestine burial," says Kari Bruwelheide, who
studied the body.
"We call it a colonial cold case.“
Bruwelheide is an assistant to forensic
anthropologist Douglas Owsley.
After more than a decade of cases that span the
centuries, the duo has curated "Written in Bone:
Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake,"
on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of
Natural History through February 2011.
Take the boy in the clandestine grave.
Since the 1990s, the Lost Towns Project in
Annapolis, Maryland—which aims to rediscover
settlements that have disappeared from the
landscape
6. The boy's skeleton was crammed into a cellar pit with a broken ceramic
milk pan lying across his rib cage.
7. Identification of boy through his skull
He recognized that the skull belonged
to a Caucasian male.
Further analyses indicated the male
was of European descent and 15 to 16
years old.
The boy's spine and teeth were
damaged from hard labor or disease.
This profile fit that of an indentured
servant in the Chesapeake Bay of the
mid-17th century.
8. Based on artifacts…..
Based on the artifacts
surrounding the body
including a coin dated 1664
and a piece of window that
has a date stamp of 1663
archaeologist Jane Cox
determined that the boy had
died between 1665 and 1675.
9. Case closed…
The boy's right wrist was fractured in a way
that suggested he used his arm to block a
strong blow shortly before his death.
That injury, along with the awkward burial,
points to a violent end.
"They were burying him in secret so they
would not have to report the death,"
Bruwelheide surmises.
Evidence of traumatic bone fracture helped
this colonial cold case to close
