Forensic Archaeology: Advances in Theory and Practice

248 Pages·2005·1.95 MB·English

by  John Hunter

FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY:
ADVANCES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

FORENSIC
ARCHAEOLOGY:
ADVANCES IN THEORY
AND PRACTICE
John Hunter
and
Margaret Cox
First published 2005
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 2005 John Hunter and Margaret Cox.
Individual contributions © 2005 individual contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
ISBN 0-203-97030-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–415–27311–0 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–27312–9 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of figures vii
List of tables ix
Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 Search and location: case studies 1–13 27
3 Forensic geophysical survey 62
PAUL CHEETHAM
4 The recovery of forensic evidence from individual graves:
case studies 14–29 96
5 The archaeology of mass graves 137
R. WRIGHT, I. HANSON AND J. STERENBERG
6 Anthropology in a forensic context 159
TAL SIMMONS AND WILLIAM D. HAGLUND
7 Legal matters 177
ROBERT DILLEY
8 Social and intellectual frameworks 204
Index 226
v

FIGURES
1.1 Part of cartoon published in The Guardian11 November 2000 3
1.2 Some of the different professional groups involved in a major incident 5
1.3 Students excavating and recording a half-sectioned grave containing
buried (plastic) human remains 8
1.4 Practical difficulties during geophysical survey caused by topography
and vegetation in a moorland landscape 13
1.5 The partly exposed rib cage of articulated skeletal remains 15
2.1 A garden search being carried out by removal of topsoil and by
looking for disturbances in natural substrates 29
2.2 Illustration of theoretical effects caused by burial on vegetation 31
2.3 Photograph showing how vegetation change above an Iron Age burial
ground is still visible today on a seasonal basis 35
2.4 Volunteers searching for buried remains in the 1960s 37
2.5 Top: using drills to vent solid surfaces for the body dog. Bottom: removal
of upper soils can indicate disturbances cut into undisturbed deposits 41
2.6 Case 1. Top: aerial view of the settlement and the wider environment
of search. Bottom: detailed search taking place in one of the secluded
gardens 46
2.7 Case 2. Half-sectioning a feature in the rear garden 48
2.8 Case 3. A detailed excavation of modern stratigraphy took place
in a rear garden over a period of several weeks 50
2.9 Case 5. Searching of the layered ash tip in the work yard 53
2.10 Case 8. Top: general view of the overall environment of Saddleworth
Moor. Bottom: geophysics plot of one of the gullies showing both
higher and lower resistance values taken at 0.5m intervals illustrating
the variability of the subsurface 56
3.1 Illustrations of the Wenner configuration and twin-electrode array in use 70
3.2 Earth resistivity plots over a single pig grave at the Lancashire test site 73
3.3 Earth resistivity survey of test graves at Havant, Hampshire 74
3.4 Resistivity survey of a garden vegetable plot 75
3.5 Top: this extract from a larger survey clearly delineates the position
of a training grave cut into chalk which is showing as a negative
magnetic anomaly. Bottom: forensic archaeology students excavating
the grave 79
3.6 Electromagnetic images of a test grave 85
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
3.7 GPR time-slice images of a test grave 89
3.8 Feature extraction from 3-D GPR time-slice survey of burials 90
4.1 A sondage or narrow trench being excavated across a suspect area 101
4.2 Half-sectioning a potential grave 103
4.3 The fully excavated grave ready for planning and photography 105
4.4 A typical plan of an excavated grave with section 106
4.5 The excavated machine tooth marks from a mass grave 109
4.6 The recovery of a footprint underneath a buried body 114
4.7 A deliberately placed layer or false horizon in the fill of a grave (case 19) 115
4.8 Case 19. Improving access to the grave by creating a working platform 122
4.9 Case 21. Excavation of the grave showing deposits below body 125
4.10 Case 22 in which the victim transpired to be a dog 127
4.11 Case 23. An unusually deep grave which needed to be accessed by
digging an adjacent platform 128
4.12 Case 26. Careful clearance of undergrowth in order to expose
scattered skeletal fragments 130
4.13 Case 27. Cleaning of an area of disturbed skeletal remains identifies a
mortar and brick structure 132
5.1 (a) Finding two edges of the 1942 grave at Serniki (Ukraine) in plan
and without disturbance to the contents of the grave
(b) Proving, in section, the existence of the grave
(c) Excavation completed 144
5.2 The distribution of all the bodies in the 1942 mass grave of Gnivan
(Ukraine) 148
5.3 (a) The murdered children at Ustinovka (Ukraine) lie on a ‘false’ base
to the mass grave
(b) The ‘false’ base in section 151
5.4 Example of a body recording sheet used at a Bosnian mass grave 153
6.1 A forensic case laid out anatomically 161
6.2 The right fourth sternal rib used to estimate age in a forensic case 165
6.3 A bilateral congenital abnormality of the medial cuneiform in a
forensic case 167
6.4 Peri-mortem surgical trauma to the left parietal resulting from the
removal of shrapnel from a blast injury in a forensic case 168
6.5 The maxillary and mandibular dentition can aid identification where
dental records exist 169
7.1 Civil and criminal court structures 178
7.2 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 182
7.3 The custody clock 185
7.4 Crown Court (Advance Notice of Expert Evidence) Rules 1987 188
7.5 Disclosure in the Crown Court 196
7.6 Overview of criminal procedure 197
7.7 Crown Court procedure (‘not guilty’ plea) 198
8.1 Remains collected and wrapped in ‘shroud bundles’ near Musayib,
in Iraq 207
8.2 The skull of an individual from Al Hilla, Iraq 221
viii
TABLES
3.1 The effectiveness of detecting graves and cremations with the most
frequently used archaeological geophysical survey methods 67
3.2 Radar parameters for common materials 87
3.3 A forensic geophysics checklist 92
6.1 Basic laboratory equipment for anthropological analysis 173
ix