ABSTRACT
Commingling is a problematic aspect of many anthropological analyses. Regardless of whether the context is archaeological, such as a Native American ossuary, or forensic, such as an aircraft crash, commingling of human remains will complicate every facet of the process from recovery to final disposition. This chapter provides an objective and sound basis for gross, metric, and molecular analysis. The complexity of a commingled assemblage is clearly dependent on the overall number of dead involved in the incident and the preservation of the remains. It is possible to broadly categorize commingling into two types: small-scale and large-scale. Large-scale commingling also introduces many logistical problems regarding analysis, such as laboratory space and data management issues. Visual matching of different element types using information such as robusticity and taphonomy may be possible in cases of small-scale comminglin.
