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IAFR Webinar #7 – An Introduction to Forensic Archaeology
January 23, 2019 @ 18:00 - 19:00 GMT
Free – £5
Roland Wessling – Roland has a BSc in Archaeological Sciences and an MSc in Forensic Archaeology. He has worked as a consultant for the UN ICTY, on domestic criminal cases in Germany/UK and has been deployed to Cyprus and Iraq for the Inforce Foundation. He was one of the Lead Archaeologists of the excavation of 250 WWI Soldiers in Fromelles, France. Roland is co-editor of the Cox, et al., 2007, mass grave book. He is currently employed by Cranfield University as a Lecturer and is co-director of the CRICC Team which carries out recovery and skeletal assessment investigation on conflict casualties.
Abstract
Forensic archaeologists try to help enforcement agencies to find and recover buried human remains and other evidence and to interpret the burial context to reconstruct past events. At the same time, forensic archaeological recovery techniques can also be employed to find missing casualties and together with anthropology, radiography, pathology and DNA analysis attempt to identify the individual and reunite the missing person with his or her loved ones.
There are a number of international organisations that utilise forensic archaeology for their humanitarian and/or forensic work, such as CMP on Cyprus, ICMP or the Argentinian and Guatemalan Teams as well as ad hoc teams assembled for specific investigations, such as ICTY in Bosnia. Other forensic archaeologists concentrate on single murder cases and finally, there is casework between the two extremes, such as finding and identifying border crossers on the US-Mexican border, where thousands perish every year due to dehydration or crime.