The Steps of Forensic Anthropology Essay

Imagine having a job where you have to examine and analyze bones all the time. That’s what forensic anthropologists do. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Forensic anthropology is examination of human skeletal and decomposing remains in a legal setting to establish the identity of unknown individuals to help determine the cause of death. According to paragraph 1 in the article “What is forensic anthropology?” by R.U. Steinberg, forensic anthropologists usually work in crime scenes, political atrocities, and suspicious death.

They collect, prepare, and analyze human remains. They identify the cause of death, work with forensic odotologists and testify in court about the victim’s identity. In the article by R.U.Steinberg, paragraph 2 tells us that the first step that forensic anthropologists take after finding the bones, is examine it and find out if it’s human.

Then they ask if it’s an individual or more. After knoork on the biological profile of the victim which includes age, height, gender, and race.

Paragraph 2 in the article says that race can be determined with antemartem pathology. After knowing the biological prifile, they establish positive identification. Dental records, hospital X-rays and DNA could be used in this method. “After that we top it off with perimotem [ time of death] pathology.” Says R.U.Steinberg. This is done in order to coclude if a murder has occured. In order to find out the time of death, they look at the details of the bones and if they have any sratches or marks in them.

While forensic anthropologists work with bones using these steps, they use new technology equipment, which helps them a lot. Instead of using old-fashioned methods, forensic anthropologists can determine the cause of death much easier and faster using technology like 3-D scanners, 3-D digitizers and skull scanners. These gadgets develop the examination of forensic anthropologists and their study. Forensic anthropologists take these steps for many reasons. One of these reasons is to make their examination easier. These steps are thekey to their job and they help them get to know more about the skeletal decomposing remains and finding the true cause of death.