Forensic archaeology is about using archaeological principles in contexts which may result in archaeological evidence being presented in a court of law. This is likely to be a criminal rather than a civil scenario, although archaeological evidence can be used in either. However, the work is most likely to relate to finding or recovering the buried remains of murder victims. There is often a misconception that ‘forensic’ archaeology has a more popular basis in determining, for example, the last meal of sacrificed bog bodies, or the nature of fatal illness identified in Egyptian mummies. But these are essentially the application of science to archaeological remains even if some of the techniques used are derived from techniques used in forensic practice. ‘Forensic’ archaeology has a greater ‘gravitas’ and usually involves working with police forces in the resolution of serious crime, normally murder. The context is invariably modern, the victim is normally a specific named individual with living relatives, and the enquiry is inevitably geared toward identifying and convicting the offender responsible for the murder. The great majority of these offences involve the disposal and concealment of human remains, in whole or in part, as a result of drug abuse, prostitution, or paedophile activities and as such mark an unusual and unpleasant context in which archaeologists may find themselves operating. In addition, a minority of cases involve the search for other types of buried remains, for example, drugs, firearms, or stolen money. Forensic archaeology also has a high profile within the context of mass graves, usually resulting from genocide and human rights abuse, and is discussed separately below. The subject is relatively new in both the US and the UK.
Despite some popularly held views, archaeology is less concerned with finding valuable objects in the ground and more concerned with understanding the nature of events in past times. Archaeology is not only concerned with identifying the location of buried remains, but also in developing techniques by which these remains can be recovered, and any associated evidence maximized in order that a reconstruction of events can take place. This chimes well with the nature of criminal investigation and can be denoted under several main headings which provide an overlap between the two disciplines:
• Search. Mapping, aerial photography, landscape analysis, geology, land use, and shallow sub-surface geophysics in order to identify clandestine graves.
• Recovery. Stratigraphy, recording and planning; physical anthropology; conservation in order to excavate and recover victims and associated evidence.
• Skeletal analysis. Physical anthropology for distinguishing between human and animal materials, and for the determination of age, stature, sex, trauma, etc.
• Environmental science. The value of seeds, pollens, entomology, flora and fauna, etc. for identifying habitats where incidents occurred.
• Analytical science. Methods for dating buried materials and for provenancing a range of organic materials and metals in order to associate samples with controls.
Sadly, this is not a simple awareness exercise. Even though the archaeological application might be straightforward, the context of personnel hierarchies, protocols, procedures, and legal constraints is very different. It entails a two-way process by which the evidential requirements of the archaeologist need to be understood by other law enforcement professionals, and vice versa. Archaeologists need to be trained in crime scene skills as much as other professionals need to be aware of archaeological interests. A major incident (e. g., homicide) will require specialist input from a range of professional groups, typically the senior investigating officer (SIO), the scientific support manager, the crime scene manager and scene-of-crime officers, forensic scientists, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the forensic pathologist. The success of the operation depends entirely on the interaction and mutual evidential understanding of all the individuals concerned.
Many archaeologists are trained in physical anthropology and are generally familiar with human hard tissue for purposes of determining age, sex, stature, trauma, etc. This familiarity also usually extends to being able to distinguish between human and animal bone and is a skill which is particularly useful in assessing the importance of bone material discovered during building operations, gardening, or house renovation. Furthermore, in forensic search scenarios where human remains may have become disarticulated or scavenged, the ability to determine this distinction in situ is both cost-effective and time saving.
Archaeology and crime scene investigation have much in common, to the extent that more than a few archaeological graduates have found satisfying career opportunities in scene-of-crime work. Both groups are essentially concerned with identifying, recording, and sampling in an effort to reconstruct past events. In archaeological terms these events might be thousands of years old, in forensic terms maybe just days or even hours old, but the same types of evidence apply, and the same rigors are necessary. The extent of the timeframe is largely an irrelevance. Archaeology has a history of feeding off other subjects in order to satisfy its holistic needs, but now there is some evidence to suggest that the reverse process is occurring: for example, a recent case study in which a boy’s torso was found in the river Thames received much benefit from the application of techniques originally developed and used in archaeology, namely palynology and stable isotope analysis. This enabled the investigation to be able to interpret the deceased’s likely country of origin and location of last moments.
Many police investigations could be described as archaeological scenarios, notably, in the UK the search of the garden of 10 Rillington Place, London in 1953 in the search for victims of John Christie, the saturated 1964 (and subsequently 1988) media coverage of the search of Saddleworth Moor for the victims of Ian Brady, and the Valentine’s Day photographs in the daily press in 1984 when Denis Nilsen’s garden in north London was excavated in the quest for disarticulated remains. More recently the search for bodies at 25, Cromwell Street, Gloucester provided an equal opportunity for archaeological intervention.
World History
