Page 85 - Veritas Vol 3, Issue 2

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and to figure out what had occurred to the remains, particularly in light of any
possible foul play evidence. The material analyzed typically comprises of mostly

or entirely skeletonized remains, or skeletal evidence that has been extracted
from fleshy remains. The forensic anthropologists can use their specialised

knowledge and techniques to re-examine skeletal remains and provide crucial

insights into the circumstances surrounding an individual's death. The
applications of forensic anthropology in mass disasters and cold cases are

therefore vital in ensuring justice, closure, and accountability. From a medical-
legal standpoint, the study of human remains has three primary goals: a well-

executed crime scene investigation, including appropriate methods for
recovering and registering human remains and applying appropriate

identification protocols. To verify the identities of people and speed up the
repatriation process, they use methods like skeletal analysis, DNA testing,

dental record comparison, and facial reconstruction. The application of this
field in mass disasters can be traced back from the identification of victims

during the 1950 Korean War.

TECHNIQUES USED IN FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY

One might think of mass disasters as either "open" or "closed" systems. The first

is a method where a predetermined number of people are known to be involved,
like in the case of an airline accident involving a passenger list. In this instance,
the effort mostly entails comparing postmortem (PM) data from the victims

with antemortem (AM) data of the people on the passenger list. Conversely,

managing an open system is far more challenging. This is the situation, for
example, when an explosion occurs in a train station or underground, or when a

sinking ship has illegal immigrants on board (and so no official passenger list).
Hence, keeping the classification of mass disasters in mind, Forensic

Anthropologists will accordingly decide on how to go about with victim
identification. One of the preliminary methods used for victim identification in

mass disasters and cold cases is Osteometric techniques wherein the experts
estimate the height and body mass of individuals based on skeletal remains.

These techniques involve the measurements of various bones such as the cranial
bones to establish the correlations between the bone lengths and body

dimensions. Other procedures involve the Comparison and superimposition of

Skeletal remains. In this process, the skeletal remains are subjected to a

VERITAS VOLUME: 3, ISSUE: 2 WRITER: SASHA VASSULA FERNANDES