About
Forensic Anthropology, Archaeology & Taphonomy introduces students to the sub-discipline of Biological Anthropology that addresses human skeletal remains recovered during medico-legal investigations. Forensic Anthropology is an inherently applied field within Anthropology and compliments the focus of IUPUI's Department of Anthropology. Forensic anthropologists are often consulted in investigations when a visual identification of human remains cannot be made by a medical examiner or law enforcement. The goals of a forensic anthropologist's involvement in medico- investigations often includes excavation and recovery (i.e., forensic archaeology), estimation of the post-mortem interval, the construction of a biological profile (e.g., age-at-death, sex, stature, etc.), positive identification, and providing conclusions and an opinion about the cause and manner of death. Practitioners routinely find themselves working in a variety of contexts from local cases of missing persons to mass disasters and international human rights projects involving the exhumation of mass graves.
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