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KEY WORDS: FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY, QUANTITATIVE METHODS, MEDICOLEGAL CASEWORK, HUMAN IDENTIFICATION, SKELETAL ANALYSIS, GENETIC ANALYSIS, REMAINS RECOVERY, DIVERSE POPULATIONS.
While forensic anthropology is often characterized as an applied science, it is deeply rooted in the larger discipline of biological anthropology. As forensic practitioners, we work to extend the theory of, and methods for, the study of human variation to the medicolegal context. We continue, therefore, to address the fundamental questions of topics critical to biological anthropology, such as the degree and distribution of skeletal and genetic diversity and the effects of environment and life history on morphological expression, just as we seek to infer the demographic parameters of sex, age, and ancestry that allow us to broadly characterize modern peoples. In speaking for the single person, however, forensic anthropologists are uniquely challenged with the issue of scale. We must distill our approaches (or methods) of biological anthropology for the detection and documentation of populational trends to the level of the individual forensic case as we reconstruct the biological profile and address the personal identity concerns that dominate the forensic anthropological analysis of unknown human remains. In concert with this change in scope, forensic anthropologists must also contend with a refocusing of perspective toward the investigative and judicial system. At once, we are expected to respond to the dynamic needs of individual identification in the service of human rights, social justice, and the medicolegal community, the increasing demands for scientific rigor in case analysis and reporting, and the changing expectations for admissible evidence and expert testimony in the courtroom (Christensen and Crowder 2009; Grivas and Komar 2008; Lesciotto 2015; Steadman 2009; Steadman et al. 2006; Wiersema et al. 2009).
Not surprisingly, the field of forensic anthropology has evolved considerably over the last half-century. The present state of the discipline is very different from when it was first admitted into the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) as the "physical anthropology" section in 1972, yet there are interesting and important parallel moments in its developmental trajectory. A decade later, Snow (1982: 97) wrote about the new expansion of physical anthropology into the area of forensics "at a time when many physical anthropologists are deeply concerned with the need to expand the scope of our field beyond its...