Description
Book SynopsisThe main goals in any forensic skeletal analysis are to answer who is the person represented (individualization), how that person died (trauma/pathology) and when that person died (the postmortem interval or PMI). The analyses necessary to generate the biological profile include the determination of human, nonhuman or nonosseous origin, the minimum number of individuals represented, age at death, sex, stature, ancestry, perimortem trauma, antemortem trauma, osseous pathology, odontology, and taphonomic effectsthe postmortem modifications to a set of remains.
The Manual of Forensic Taphonomy, Second Edition covers the fundamental principles of these postmortem changes encountered during case analysis. Taphonomic processes can be highly destructive and subtract information from bones regarding their utility in determining other aspects of the biological profile, but they also can add information regarding the entire postmortem history of the remains and the relative
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The Importance and Use of Forensic Taphonomic Data 2. Microscopic Destruction of Bone 3. Soft Tissue Decomposition in Terrestrial Ecosystems 4. Bone Density and Bone Attrition 5. Effects of Burial Environment on Osseous Remains 6. Fluvial Taphonomy 7. Marine Environmental Alterations to Bone 8. Contemporary Cultural Alterations to Bone: Anatomical, Ritual, and Trophy 9. Faunal Dispersal, Reconcentration, and Gnawing Damage to Bone in Terrestrial Environments 10. Deposition and Dispersal of Human Remains as a Result of Criminal Acts: Homo sapiens sapiens as a Taphonomic Agent 11. Subaerial Weathering and Other Terrestrial Surface Taphonomic Processes 12. Identifying the Origin of Taphonomic Bone Staining and Color Changes in Forensic Contexts 13. Taphonomy and the Timing of Bone Fractures in Trauma Analysis 14. Thermal Alteration to Bone 15. DNA Survivability in Skeletal Remains 16. Avian Taphonomy 17. Effects of Recovery Methods 18. Invertebrate Modification of Bone 19. Reptile Taphonomy 20. Laws of Taphonomic Relative Timing 21. Laboratory and Field Methods in Forensic Taphonomy
