Transcript Stanford_EBA3_C15

Exploring Biological
Anthropology:
The Essentials, 3rd Edition
CRAIG STANFORD
JOHN S. ALLEN
SUSAN C. ANTÓN
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Chapter 15
Biomedical and Forensic Anthropology
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Biomedical Anthropology and the
Biocultural Perspective
The subfield of anthropology concerned with
issues of health and illness
Both biological and cultural variables
offer important insights into health and illness
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Birth, Growth, and Aging
• Human Childbirth
– Birth canal
• 90% of American births are in hospitals
• 31.8% (2007) are Cesarean delivery
• In 1900 only 5% of U.S. births were in hospitals
Patterns of Human Growth
– Auxology: the science of growth and development
Stages of Human Growth
– The prenatal or gestational stage
– Infancy, juvenile stage, adolescence, and adulthood
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Birth, Growth, and Aging (cont’d)
• The Secular Trend in Growth
• Menarche and Menopause
• Aging
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Infectious Disease and Biocultural
Evolution
Infectious diseases are those in which a
biological agent or pathogen parasitizes or infects a host
• Human Behavior and the Spread of Infectious
Disease
– Agricultural
• sedentary
• water
– Mobility and migration
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Infectious Disease and Biocultural
Evolution (cont’d)
• Infectious Disease and the Evolutionary Arms Race
– The immune system
• antigens
• antibodies
• immunoglobulins
– Cultural and behavioral interventions
• shunning
• vaccination
– Evolutionary adaptations
• sickle cell
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Diet and Disease
• The Paleolithic Diet
– Modern diets differ from hunter-gatherer diets
• Agriculture and Nutritional Deficiency
– Staple foods
– Pellagra
– Beriberi
• Agriculture and Abundance: Thrifty and
Nonthrifty Genotypes
– Nutritional excess
– Thrifty pleiotropic genotype
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Forensic Anthropology: Life, Death,
and the Skeleton
• Forensic anthropologists work with clues
about growth, health, disease, and adaptation
that are visible in each of our skeletons
• These scientists are specialists in human
osteology who use the theory and method of
biological anthropology to answer questions
about how recent humans lived and died
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Field Recovery and Laboratory
Processing
Similar to Archaeology
Context is Critical
Mapping, Photography,
and Excavation
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Field Recovery and Laboratory
Processing (cont’d)
• Detailed
examination
• Catalog of all finds
(including skeletal
remains)
• In forensic work,
catalog part of strict
chain of custody
• Skeletal remains
cleaned and laid out
in anatomical
position
• Bones inventoried
and studied for clues
about life and death
of individual
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The Biological Profile
The biological particulars of an individual as
estimated from their skeletal remains; includes
estimates of sex, age at death, height, and disease
status
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
• Age at Death Reported as a Range
– tooth eruption patterns
– tooth wear
– long bone development
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
• Sex
– Pelvis
• sciatic notch
– Skull
• male skulls are more robust
• mastoid process and muscle marking of the occipital
bone tend to be larger in males
• brow ridge is heavier on males
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
• Ancestry: Geographic conditions in which our
ancestors evolved influence the anatomy of
their descendants
– less accurate than determining age or sex
– base ancestry assessments on comparisons with
skeletal populations of known ancestry
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
• Height and Weight
– Height (Stature): based on summing the heights of
all the bones in the skeleton that contribute to
overall height (Fully Method)
– Weight: difficult; formulas exist for predicting the
approximate weight of an individual from his or
her weight-bearing joints
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
Premortem Injury and Disease
Premortem fractures can be key
evidence of lifeways
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The Biological Profile (cont’d)
Perimortem and Postmortem Trauma
Perimortem trauma is the physical evidence
of activity that happened slightly before,
during, or slightly after the time of death.
We can differentiate it from premortem
injury because in perimortem trauma, no
healing is evident.
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Identification and Forensic
Anthropology
• Major Goal of Forensic Anthropology
• Establish positive identity of a victim
• Time Since Death
• Body temperature
• State and rate of decomposition due to
environmental conditions
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Identification and Forensic
Anthropology (cont’d)
• Antemortem Records Facial Reconstruction
and Positive IDs
• develop biological profile
• define time frame of event
• comparison of antemortem records such as dental
records, surgical implants, or X-ray matches
• part art/part science (facial reconstruction)
– systematic study of the relationship between skin
thickness and bone features
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Applications of Forensic Anthropology
American Academy of Forensic Sciences
• Mass Fatalities
– World Trade Center, September 11, 2001
– Oklahoma City bombing
– Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, LA
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Applications of Forensic Anthropology
(cont’d)
• Mass Fatalities (cont’d)
– In all cases, forensic anthropologists called to help with
identification of remains; destruction of skeletal material
in many cases
– United States Government established Disaster Mortuary
Teams (DMORT) that include pathologists, forensic
anthropologists, and forensic odontologists
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Applications of Forensic Anthropology
(cont’d)
• War Dead
– Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) in Hawaii
• formed during WWII
• skeletal remains of U.S. soldiers and civilians from wars
have been recovered and identified by this group of
anthropologists
– CIL now part of the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing
in Action Accounting Command (JPAC)
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Applications of Forensic Anthropology
(cont’d)
• War Crimes and Genocide
– Teams composed of forensic anthropologists,
archaeologists, pathologists, evidence technicians,
radiologists, odontologists, autopsy technicians, and
computer scientists work together to discover, process,
and recover remains from mass graves
– Ultimate goals of identification, cause of death, and time
of death all used for criminal proceedings
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