ABSTRACT
Forensic anthropology and archaeology are most commonly associated with domestic homicides, individual crime scenes, and the analysis of single skeletons. However, the number of scenarios that employ the expertise of forensic anthropologists is expanding. These include the rapidly increasing number of those who die as undocumented migrants (e.g., those fleeing armed conflict in Syria and those around the U.S.-Mexico border), civilian and combatant
Introduction 335 Main frameworks for the forensic investigation of international crimes 336
Preliminary notes on human rights and mass graves 336 Humanitarian forensic action 337 Forensic anthropology as a service to prosecution 338 Mass fatalities and emergency action 339
Recent developments in forensic anthropology and investigations of international law 340 Final words on the role of the forensic anthropologist in the international law context 341 Summary 342 Review questions 343 Glossary 343 References 344
victims of on-going armed conflict (e.g., Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine), and groups that are victimized by criminal gangs and repressive governments (e.g., 43 students-teacher who disappeared after being detained in Iguala, Mexico, in 2014, The Guardian 2015). There are different reasons why these latter types of forensic work are less known, perhaps principally because many of the victims in these contexts are socially marginalized and do not capture the public attention like reality or true crime shows and fictionalized forensic work that focus on domestic crimes. Other reasons include limited incentives for practitioners in international investigations compared with practitioners who work primarily in academia and consult on domestic cases. Scientific dissemination via publication is necessary for advancing one’s academic career and for research funding, but there are disincentives or even prohibitions on publication in international crimes investigations. Almost always, there is a need to exercise discretion during judicial investigations or a requirement of confidentiality applied during humanitarian work that assists governments to fulfill their legal obligations to investigate missing persons in post-conflict contexts. In more difficult situations, governments deny killings and prevent their investigation, either because they fear negative publicity about their failure to protect citizens or because government agents are responsible for enforced disappearances and/or killings. Many anthropologists who dedicate a majority or all their time to this type of work are faced with a constant stream of casework and lack the opportunity to write up their experience, conduct research, and explore more theoretical implications of what they do and how they do it. In sum, we hear about and read less from these colleagues than we do from those who typically consult out of academia or municipal medical legal institutions on routine cases that come into their laboratories, and that is unfortunate. This is not to denigrate in any way those who are tasked with domestic work and those in academia (for it is especially the latter who mentored all of us in the discipline), simply to say that our perception of the practice of forensic anthropology is skewed toward the domestic crime context, and the professional literature has an Anglo (North American/UK) bias.
