Sharon Moses

Forensic artists must overcome ingrained ideas of what the human face “should” look like in order to learn how to draw it realistically. Ironically, those ingrained images and perceptions tucked away in our minds present the biggest obstacles to realism. As a teacher of a forensic art class in anthropology at Northern Arizona University, I encounter students of varying degrees of artistic ability and background. I do not require that students have pre-requisite courses in art before taking my course because I believe that any student can learn to draw faces more realistically if they apply some basic forensic art techniques used in composite sketching combined with an understanding of facial anatomy. This article is about teaching Northern Arizona University students forensic art drawing methods, but it is also about the lesser-known aspect of doing composite sketches, such as applying cultural understanding and sensitivity when interviewing traumatized witnesses and survivors of cr...

Social anthropology has largely focused upon kinship and institutionalized economic interests that influence death rituals, primarily to benefit elites within stratified societies. It is the goal of this work to: Dlook for common factors emphasizing the philosophical and cosmological beliefs in the development and origination of burial customs that are not necessarily specific to elites ; 2)determine whether these beliefs may have contributed to the origination of secondary burial practices or harboring of the corpse or its dismembered parts in living space for a limited or indefinite period of time ; 3) search for the concept of the sacred, if any, suggested by the spatial placement of the dead and their associated symbologies; 4) determine the significance, if any, that fear of the dead plays in secondary burial practices. Ackxiowl edgxnent s I wish to thank my committee for the support and guidance they gave me in shaping this thesis : to my Chair, Professor Katherine Weist, for ...

Twenty-one ritual deposits have been found in and around cabin sites along the slave street on the former Hume Plantation on Cat Island, South Carolina. Earliest deposits date back to the eighteenth century; however, evidence suggests ritual activity, known as conjure practices or hoodoo, continued after the Civil War among the emancipated Africans who chose to stay. The aim of this article is to present an alternative viewpoint that not all interpretations of enslaved African ritual activity or repurposed artifacts must be viewed through the lens of “resistance” but can be an expression of African agency to define new and multivariant spiritualties in light of changing identities, historical contexts, and value systems. These adaptations incorporated notions of social class and hierarchy as well as expanded spiritual symbolism from exposure to and interaction with Europeans and Native Americans. The result was a formation of religious syncretism.

For those in law enforcement, geographic crime scene mapping has historically been a tactic for estimating the location of an offender by calculating his or her base (home, work, or other significant lifestyle habitat) in relationship to their known crime scenes. Theoretically and simplistically put, according to theoretical premise, this base should be centrally located within a patterned crime scene range as plotted on a map. This chapter addresses two key aspects about geographical profiling strategies and their significance to the field of forensic archaeology. First, the basic components of geographic profiling in general and the arguments for and against its efficacy are discussed. Secondly, does this methodology merit development, sometimes referred to as winthropping, for application in forensic archaeology where the objective is essentially the opposite? Rather than locating the offender, the focus is on finding undiscovered clandestine graves, body dumps, or scatters when the offender has either already been identified and associated with specific body disposition sites or the offender is still at-large but his/her behavior has revealed a pattern.