Forensic Archaeology Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Forensic Archaeology - Assignment Example Popular but somewhat not realistic perception and understanding of forensic science has brought much awareness in public and government and has influenced the court system, that it is now called â€Å"CSI effect† (Toobin, 2007). Forensic archaeology, defined and considered a specific emerging field, consists of tools, techniques and methods, developed for archaeological research purposes, to assist legal investigations. Forensic archaeologists are usually the members of faculty of archaeology deployed to work in close coordination with expert search teams, forensic entomologists, forensic botanists and forensic pathologists to find and investigate buried evidence at crime scenes. Forensic archaeology assists in investigating genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, mass disaster victim recovery, and repatriation of war dead (Hunter & Cox, 2005). Forensic archaeology helps to discover and solve the events pertaining to a specific crime scene or disposal site. Generally, each crime scene brings its own unique set of questions requiring answers to unveil the truth as the circumstances of each investigation differ considerably. The questions may include but not limited to the way grave was dug, identities of buried persons, during for which bodies remained buried and presence of any other material in graves that may assist investigations. Constrained by limitation of time and opportunities to access the evidence site, forensic archaeologists devise specific strategies and employ appropriate techniques or a series of methods to optimize the evidence for search and recovery of truth. Thus forensic archaeologist strive to identify the understand the events prior to and around the death and burial, method of death and tools used for burial, and thus help to identify the party or parties involved in crime (Miller, 2010). Usefulness o f Involving Archaeologists Forensic archaeology has several key roles in international war crime investigations including searching, locating and confirming the site such as mass graves, surface scatters and execution sites; excavation, recording, retrieval, recovery, preservation and analysis of evidence. These roles provide sufficient information to determine the existence or refute of a crime, identification of the human remains, their ethnicity, culture, geographical origin, time frame of death and reconstruction of crime scene, the actions of perpetrator and perpetrator’s identity. Such information helps in successful criminal prosecution and identification of victims (Oxenham, 2008). Repatriation of missing and identification of dead in a genocide or war has been the main focus of such forensic archaeological investigations taken place from a humanitarian view. It is worth mentioning that the evidence, which was initially thought to be of humanitarian interest, is now u sed to assist criminal war investigations. In such investigations, the extent to which evidence is required may not be established at initial stages, thus resulting in maximum evidence recovery, high standards of evidence integrity and ability to preserve evidence are emphasized to mitigate any associated risks. Maximum evidence recovery helps to identify victims, reconstruct crime scene and corroborate the witness statements. There are many benefits of collection and analysis of evidence including recovery of remains for proper burial, identification of remains, repatriation of missing, human rights and deterrence to similar incidences. Different artifacts retrieved from crime scene provide information on past events surrounding