Introduction: Collection of Macroscopic Osseous Taphonomic Data and the Recognition of Taphonomic Suites of Characteristics

Abstract

Why does one so rarely have a complete human skeleton to examine? This question is of maddening frequency and considerable importance in forensic anthropology, since it tempers in so many ways what other information may be read from a set of remains (Ubelaker 1997). The fundamental questions in any forensic skeletal analysis include the determination of human vs. nonhuman, the minimum number of individuals, age at death, sex, stature, ancestry, perimortem trauma, antemortem trauma, osseous pathology, and odontology. These analyses together are used to form the biological profiles of the individuals present, which in turn narrow the identification of those remains or in some cases lead to their positive identification. The patterns of perimortem and antemortem Goals of This Volume 1 Taphonomy 3 Forensic Taphonomy 4 Time Frames Involved 4 Other Problems in Forensic Taphonomic Analysis 6 Information Loss, Information Gain 6 Contextual Information 8 Temporal 9 Perimortem vs. Postmortem Alteration 9 Taphonomic Suites of Characteristics 11 Data Collection for Common Taphonomic Alterations to Bones 11 Other Lines of Evidence 11 Future Forensic Taphonomic Research 13 Acknowledgments 14 References 14 trauma may aid other medicolegal specialists in the determination of the cause of death and manner of death. All of these other analyses become incrementally more difficult or impossible with the fragmentation, general surface degradation, and loss of skeletal elements. Whether these bone…