Within the subfield of Biological Anthropology, the branch that stands out to me the most is Forensic Anthropology. Since I am in the military and want to stay in the government after serving, I will be dealing with the legal issues my entire career so I need to be educated in all aspects, especially when dealing with remains.
Forensic Anthropology is the application of the science of physical or biological anthropology to legal processes. Anthropologists that specialize in forensics often focus their studies on the human skeleton. When looking at organizations for forensic anthropology I came across SOFA (Society of Forensic Anthropologists). The main goal of SOFA is to encourage communication and studies between forensic anthropologists by educating the medicolegal community on ethical standards and the uses of forensic anthropology. Within this website, SOFA advertises a series of organizations that they contribute to on a daily basis and that is how I found NAMUS (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System).
Did you know that 600,000 people go missing each year? If you exclude the people who are found safe and sound or identified from that 600,000, there is an existing group of 4,400 people who are recovered and unidentified each year. The focus of NAMUS is to bring people, information, forensic science, and technology together in order to help solve missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases. This is a huge organization and without the single aspect of forensics it would all fall apart. Forensic anthropology not only helps get information about a skeletal body like age, gender, nationality, culture, and cause of death but it also takes that information and matches those skeletal remains to a missing individual.
Earlier I talked about how there are 4,400 unidentified bodies recovered each year but it does not stay that way. Out of this group, at the end of the year there are probably around 1,000 unidentified bodies remaining. Even though this is still a high number, each year it gets smaller. With the collaboration of a team they are able to identify the bodies and provide closure to their loved ones. Forensic services itself is collaborated of forensic odontology, fingerprint examination, forensic anthropology, and DNA analysis. With the use of these services, these people’s bodies are not only brought to justice but the people who hurt them can be placed in the hands of the authorities. When someone is taken to court with a crime, for example homicide, forensic anthologists would be the witnesses used to present the scientific data linking that suspect to the crime.
Every day 5-6 people go missing in the United States. This may not seem like a big number in comparison to the size of the population but it adds up. As much as we continue to hope those missing people are found safe and alive, there are some who are not as lucky. With the organization of NAMUS the fight will never end to make this world a better place with the work of a team.
Websites used: http://www.sofainc.org/links https://www.namus.gov
Forensic Anthropology has always fascinated me as well. Seeing the numbers of people that go missing is terrifying! I try not to think about things like that, but it’s important to bring attention to. I watch a lot of shows like Criminal Minds and the crime scene notes always make me curious. I’m sure that being able to identify people brings a great deal of relief to their loved ones and may help put the offenders behind bars. The advances in technology have come so far and I’m excited to see what else is created in the future. Hopefully the number of unidentified people continues to fall. It’s incredible that people are able to be identified just from their bones or teeth. I wish you the best of luck in the military and in the future!