Thursday, February 12, 2009

Forensic anthropologist

Recently the profession of Forensic Anthropology has become increasingly visible in popular culture through the work of Kathy Reichs, a real-life forensic anthropologist and author, whose heroine, Temperance Brennan, works in the field, and is also the central character in the television series, Bones and of course, the so called "CSI effect." A Forensic Anthropologists must not be confused with Forensic Pathologists, whose job is to examine corpses to determine the cause of death.  
In 1999 Sue Black became the lead forensic anthropologist to the British Forensic Team in Kosovo, deployed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on behalf of the United Nations. She was awarded an OBE for her services to forensic anthropology in Kosovo.  

Black spoke to Julie Bindel of "The Guardian" about being a “bone detective” and her most high profile assignment to Kosovo where her team identified bodies in the Balkans - both for public record, and for burial. The techniques Black used included comparing dental records with the corpses, and examining markers on the bone to determine age, ethnicity and gender.


3 comments:

laurabora said...

this is really well organized .. great job!

Anonymous said...

I think that this was a very nicely done review. Three aspects of the article that i found were particularly well presented include pinpointing an interesting topic that pertains to the field of forensics, focus on anthropology and how it has influenced the world of science, and a well written analysis of the article. Two things that might have helped the summary would have been better use of grammar and a precise description of the job of the forensic anthropologist. Overall I thought the review was very well done and taught me about the importance of anthropology and how it has helped solve crimes in the past.

Sam Benner said...

This was a good article to have found. It was interesting to learn of the increase in popularity of the study of forensic anthropology, and how anthropology is such a huge focus. It was well rounded and organized. It was offputting how the article kind of switched topics from Kathy Reichs to Sue Black. It also could have been more descriptive, as it was rather broad. Overall, it was a good article and gave some good perspective on the study of anthropology and its influence on the world of science.