On WEIRD Anthropologists and Their White Skeletons

Forensic Anthropology, 2021

Forensic anthropologists traditionally estimate “race” or “ancestry” as part of the biological profile. While practitioners may have changed the terms used to describe regionally patterned human skeletal variation, the degree to which they have altered their typological approaches remains unclear. This study analyzed 119 peer-reviewed forensic anthropology articles published in four relevant journals (1966–2020) by matching combination(s) of the key words “race,” “ancestry,” “ethnicity,” and/or “population affinity.” Results indicated that while “ancestry” has supplanted “race,” this change has not brought concurrent modifications in approach, nor deeper scrutiny of underlying concepts. “Race” and “ancestry” were infrequently defined in 13% and 12% of sampled articles, respectively, and a plethora of social, geographic, and pseudoscientific terms persisted. Forensic anthropologists increasingly engaged with questions addressing the forces patterning human biological variation: 65% of studies postdating 1999 discussed population histories/structures and microevolution; 38% between 1966–1999. Fewer studies contextualized or critiqued approaches to analyzing population variation (32% of studies postdating 1999; 4% from 1966–1999), and virtually no studies considered the possibility that skeletal variation reflected embodied social inequity (5% of studies postdating 1999; 0% from 1966–1999). This lack of interrogation and clarity contributes to the faulty notion that all forensic anthropologists share similar definitions and leads to an oversimplification of complex biocultural processes. While the lack of definitions and biocultural engagement may be partly due to editorial and peer-review pressures, it is likely that many forensic anthropologists have not interrogated their own perspectives. This article holds that it is essential for us to do so.

Forensic Anthropology, 2024

Popular renditions on the history of forensic anthropology have traced the discipline’s roots back to early European anatomy and nineteenth to twentieth-century American research and applications to the legal system, often highlighting the works of several recurring figures. These forebearers are overwhelmingly composed of white men to the exclusion of, as we argue here, pioneers of color. As a counter to prevailing Eurocentric narratives, we present the biographies of diverse contemporaries who were equally foundational to the field, including Black Americans, immigrants, and luminaries outside of the Western world. Common themes among their experiences involved discrimination, a lack of opportunities and recognition, and a biocultural and humanistic praxis that demonstrate modern discourses within the forensic anthropology community are not novel. Ultimately, this work shows that the historical foundations of forensic anthropology, in both the United States and globally, include a far more diverse cast of pioneers than what the prevailing literature suggests and should serve as a springboard from which our discipline can grow, both in its past and in its future.

Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2021

Biology

One of the parameters forensic anthropologists have traditionally estimated is ancestry, which is used in the United States as a proxy for social race. Its use is controversial because the biological race concept was debunked by scientists decades ago. However, many forensic anthropologists contend, in part, that because social race categories used by law enforcement can be predicted by cranial variation, ancestry remains a necessary parameter for estimation. Here, we use content analysis of the Journal of Forensic Sciences for the period 2009–2019 to demonstrate the use of various nomenclature and resultant confusion in ancestry estimation studies, and as a mechanism to discuss how forensic anthropologists have eschewed a human variation approach to studying human morphological differences in favor of a simplistic and debunked typological one. Further, we employ modern geometric morphometric and spatial analysis methods on craniofacial coordinate anatomical landmarks from several L...

We write this Foreword to introduce issues that we are convinced will interest many different kinds of anthropologists. Forensic anthropologists exist in many different parts of the world and usually have training as biological–physical anthropologists. Yet much of their work touches on the violence that surrounds us and is, therefore, just as much about the living (and the challenges to their lives) as it is about the dead. It is also about the ways that the dead shape social life, our capacities to come to terms with the effects of violence on everyday life, and our understandings of the human experience of time and relationships. We ourselves are sociocultural anthropologists, not forensic anthropologists, but we have both dealt with death, war, and dissidence in our lives and our work as anthropologists. We know that we are not alone. Indeed, many anthropologists of different sorts have experience with at least one of these—death, war, or dissidence often in contexts of great structural inequality. There is a growing literature on this topic, framed in terms of an anthropology of suffering or violence. The emphasis is not uncontested; there is a debate about the place and value in anthropology of what Joel Robbins (2013) has called a " suffering slot. " We do not all write about those experiences. In fact, we often do not know what to do when caught in a situation of violence, but we learn from others who do or at least seek guidance from those who do. It is, therefore, not surprising that we would be quite interested in those anthropologists who bridge the realm of the living and the dead, the dying and the assassinated, the lost and the found, the privileged and the silenced. We could include many sociocultural and archaeological anthropologists of the state and medical anthropologists as well, but we thought it useful to ask forensic anthropologists here to discuss their work and their experiences—as a starting point, not an end point. Our colleagues who work in this arena deal with crime, domestic violence, state violence, natural disasters, and wars of different kinds. They do their best to determine causes of deaths, identify human remains and situate them in historical contexts, recognize the limits of their work, and bring the relief often sought by surviving family members. They also live and work under what one of our contributors, Soren Blau, calls the " CSI effect " —not everywhere, of course, but in enough settings where the general public sees fictionalized forensic work on the big screen or the small screen and makes assumptions about forensic work as a result. Like archaeologists who often see swashbuckling archaeologists in the movies always seemingly looking for big monuments or long-lost treasures, forensic anthropologists have to grapple with the pluses and minuses of public attention and interest. For those working in familial or community contexts, trying to reveal the circumstances under which loved ones died, the expectations can be hard to manage. When subjected to the rigor of cross-examination in courts and of forensic medicine, one may be caught between the desire for justice and the limits of empirical evidence, as well as sometimes between the passion that drives the work and the objective stance that its presentation frequently demands. Perhaps unlike many an anthropological archaeologist, forensic anthropologists also grapple with the perceptions that others in forensic work have of them—of what they can uniquely bring to forensic work and how they can complement the work of others. We invited forensic anthropologists in different countries and regions of the world to answer a set of questions we came up with. Five answered our initial request, three came through with answers to our questions in a fairly standard Q and A format, and one wanted to participate but decided to do so only on condition of anonymity. When we asked about ways we could lessen this individual's fear of going public, we learned that the issue wasn't really fear itself but, rather, that the consequences of going public could result in not being able to continue the work. The context within which the anonymous forensic anthropologist works is one in which the state is actively hostile to investigations that it construes as " political. " Addressing familial and community desires to find bodies, excavate them, and rebury them must be undertaken with care and delicacy lest the work be noticed by the powers that be and halted, with potentially dire consequences for the communities and their leadership. This colleague may well represent many other forensic anthropologists whose work is so important and so " under the radar " that continuing the work is more important than getting individual credit or attention (through publishing, being cited, receiving public service awards, or even being spotlighted). We are very grateful that we are able to publish

American Anthropologist, 2022

Forensic Genomics

Forensic anthropology is in the midst of its latest reckoning with the concept of ancestry, particularly insofar as its role in the development of biological profiles for unidentified decedents and the effects that these estimations have on broader investigative processes. As anthropologists who collaborate with forensic genomics experts, we are interested in considering how debates within anthropological circles might inform-or be informed by-detailed biogeographical ancestry estimates generated as part of forensic genomic analyses. Although such analyses are clearly rooted in the natural sciences, we believe that explorations of what practitioners and the public do with this genomic data-and how this relates to issues of identity-must ultimately be a social science pursuit. In this article, we summarize the history of the race concept in anthropology and contemporary debates about ancestry estimation occurring more specifically among forensic anthropologists. We will also review some of the literature from the emerging field of social science perspectives on genomics and identity.

Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2020

Recently, Drs. Bethard and DiGangi opened a dialogue on the application of ancestry estimation as part of the biological profile in forensic anthropology [1]. Ancestry estimation of human skeletal remains is routinely used to predict a probable social race based on metric and morphological data from the skeleton. Anthropologists accept the social construction of race and are acutely aware of its harmful impact in American society, particularly with respect to the historic use of anthropology to promote scientific racism. When scientists fail to 'call out' racist ideas in their field, these ideas can become embedded within institutions and society, further reifying racist ideology [2]. In this context, we wish to respond to Bethard and DiGangi's request to open a conversation regarding the use of ancestry estimation in forensic anthropology and how it contributes to the identification process. In this letter, we provide a foundation for a conversation about ancestry as a means to encourage thoughtful discussion moving forward on the issues of redress, diversity, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Social Science & Medicine, 1992

Most anthropologists have abandoned the concept of race as a research tool and as a valid representation of human biological diversity. Yet, race identification continues to be one of the central foci of forensic anthropological casework and research. It is maintained in this paper that the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed 'racial' category. A specimen may display features that point to African ancestry. In this country that person is likely to have been labeled Black regardless of whether or not such a race actually exists in nature.