ABSTRACT

This chapter provides the morphological, chemical, immunological, and radioisotope dating techniques investigated within the last 60 years and their potential application to the field of forensic science. Early studies focused on morphological characteristics, such as bone consistency, weight, and specific gravity, as a means for differentiating modern and ancient bones. Immunological techniques have focused on the detection of residual serological activity of bone protein as an indicator of postmortem bone age. Knight and Lauder modified a technique first described by Moores, Spackman, and Stein in 1958 and Ho in 1965 in which bone powder was resuspended in dilute acid. The optical density of the resulting supernatant was analyzed and subjected to ion-exchange chromatography. Original attempts at dating skeletal remains using morphological and physical characteristics were not successful and led to the investigation of chemical characteristics instead. Although many chemical techniques were employed and some success was achieved, the majority of studies yielded contradictory results.