ANTHROP 3FA3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Scanning Electron Microscope, Radiodensity, Elemental Analysis
14 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Medicolegal: refers to the need for human remains to be processed through the medicolegal system for identification and/or criminal prosecution. Medicolegal significance: determining whether the material is of interest to the medicolegal death investigation system. Non-skeletal materials as well as non-human bones and ancient remains may be of forensic interest. Determining whether the material is skeletal or not is usually accomplished by gross visual examination of the questioned material and surrounding context and recognizing whether or not it possesses features diagnostic of osseous and dental tissue. Sometimes, however, this determination can be made difficult due to fragmentation or taphonomic processes that may destroy or obscure many of the morphological features that normally make bone and teeth readily recognizable. The most commonly encountered context in which skeletal material and other materials may be initially confused is in cases of burning. The type of analysis selected will depend on the size and condition of the material: visual analysis, radiography analysis.
