Practicing Forensic Anthropology

The problem of missing, endangered, and unidentified persons is increasingly approached through a human rights model with successful outcomes. Contexts vary from international investigations into war crimes, genocide, and extrajudicial killings to American "cold cases." In all these examples, anthropologists play critical roles such as searching for clandestine graves, crime scene recovery, human identification, interviewing witnesses, repatriation, public education, and testifying in court. To successfully identify unknown persons, key questions about human variation and biology are essential. For example, can ancestry be reliably estimated? What are the ramifications of estimating the biological profile of an unknown person without appropriate references samples? Does the variation occur because of inherent genetic variation or environmental conditions? Given the potential variation that exists, what are the implications of using standard calibrations across populations in criminal trials? Moreover, forensic anthropologists today work in diverse cultural and legal environments. How do the roles of forensic anthropologists differ in diverse legal settings? The current practice of