The present research examined the features that may differentiate cuts made in bone by mechanical and hand-powered saws, specifically investigating the characteristics of commercially available reciprocating saws. The partial limbs of adult white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were used as a proxy for human remains, and were cut using five commercially available reciprocating saw blades and a hand-powered hacksaw. The reciprocating blades tested ranged from five teeth-per-inch to 14/18 teeth-per-inch and included raker, alternating, and wavy tooth sets. The hacksaw blade had 32 teeth-per-inch, with wavy set teeth. All the blades examined were intended to cut wood, metal, or both materials. The resulting false start kerfs and complete kerfs on the remains were then examined macroscopically and microscopically. The present study utilized both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine kerf features that characterize reciprocating saws. The presentation of specific features within the kerf varied based upon blade properties, how the implement was powered, and how it was wielded in reference to the material. The results of the present study demonstrated that significant differences do exist between reciprocating saw blades. Kerf characteristics in which significant differences were noted include: kerf false start (cross section) shape, frequency of cut surface drift, presence of harmonics, striation regularity, and exit chipping size. Inter-blade differences generally reflect class characteristics previously established for hand-powered blades, though reciprocating blades do not strictly follow these categorizations (Symes 1992; Symes et al. 1998, 2010). Identification of inter-blade differences allows the limited identification of sub-classes within reciprocating saws based on the above characteristics, though blades cannot be uniquely identified. Additionally, interior exit chipping was noted, which has not been mentioned in previous sharp force trauma research. Ultimately, this research has applications for sharp force trauma analysis and further aids in the identification of reciprocating saw use in a forensic context, including dismemberments.

Determining the depositional environment and the postmortem alterations to a set of remains are aspects of forensic investigations that are necessary to explain the circumstances surrounding the death of the individual. Further research on the taphonomic agents that can impact skeletal material can aid in the differentiation between various postmortem alterations that impact a single set of remains. The present study focuses on organic staining as a method for reconstructing the deposited environment of the remains and the taphonomic agents in which they came into contact. Organic staining results largely from tannins leaching from plant materials, including wood and leaves, and therefore can be seen on bone deposited in wooden coffin environments or on terrestrial surfaces. The present study hypothesized that the degree of staining observed on skeletal elements would increase as the length of exposure to the organic matter increased and that different plant materials, and environments, would leave different patterns or colorations of staining. The skeletal elements consisted of 150 commercially available pig (Sus scrofa) femora that had the epiphyses removed and were completely defleshed without utilizing chemicals or boiling. The sample was divided into three groups with differing conditions and/or types of organic material introduced. Some were buried in a marshy environment within wooden boxes constructed of ten wood types commonly utilized in coffin construction throughout U.S. history: hickory (Carya sp.), walnut (Juglans sp.), cherry (Prunus sp.), soft maple (Acer sp.), mahogany (Swietenia sp.), yellow pine (Pinus sp.), poplar (Populus sp.), cedar (Cedrus sp.), oak (Quercus sp.), and spruce (Picea sp.). Additional femora were deposited in plastic containers lined with the same wood types as above and filled with tap water. Five control bones were deposited in a container with tap water and five additional bones were placed in a container with commercial tannic acid. The final group of femora was deposited on the ground surface surrounded by four types of dead vegetation: evergreen pine needles (Pinus strobus), northern red oak leaves (Quercus rubra), sugar maple leaves (Acer saccharum), and acorns (Quercus rubra) collected from the Boston area. The bones were removed once a month from their experimental environments and left overnight to dry. The level of staining that manifested on the osseous material was recorded qualitatively using the Munsell Soil Color Chart under a consistent indoor 40- watt daylight light bulb. The staining was recorded after two months upon initiation of the study and every following month until the study’s completion. After the color staining was recorded, the bones were returned to their experimental environments until the next interval of data collection. An additional sample of 15 bones, which were previously buried with direct soil contact, was also analyzed. These bones were either buried within the O, A, or C soil horizons for an interval of 1, 2, or 3 years prior to analysis. They were photographed and the staining was classified on one occasion after which the bones were permanently withdrawn and not returned to the experimental environment. In all of the experimental environments, staining was present after two months of exposure, and the color darkened across the bone surface with each episode of data collection. Both groups exposed to the wood types displayed staining across the entire bone surface with a few major colors on the bone shaft, while minor colors were only expressed along the margins or as small patches along the shaft. As the buried boxes began to break down, which is commonly observed in coffin burials, soil was able to infiltrate the boxes and contact the bones. This process resulted in multiple shades of brown to be present in the staining across bones in multiple wood types. The bones in the plastic containers with wood exhibited a larger variation in color staining likely due to a higher concentration of tannins restricted to a smaller area around the bones combined with a lack of water inflow. The staining ranged from red for bones with mahogany to brown for bones with cedar to even dark gray or black on bones with walnut and tannic acid, respectively. The bones in plant matter differed in that the organic staining was sporadic, often with large areas of very pale brown or yellowish brown coloration and with smaller patches of shades of darker brown. The staining present on the buried soil bones was intermediate to the other samples, in that it was diffuse across the shaft with a large range of colorations present. The results from the present study indicate that staining can manifest on bone within a relatively short time frame once skeletonization occurs and a variety of colorations or patterns of staining can manifest based on the plant material. The present research demonstrates the potential of organic staining to aid in estimations of the postmortem interval as well as an environmental reconstruction through species identification.

There is a vast amount of information that the bones can offer and this can be on a macroscopic level, a microscopic level, or both. Understanding the changes in bone morphology can provide an understanding the broader picture of an individual’s life. The natural progression of changes in bone follows the natural progression of life. On the macroscopic level, morphological changes occur to skeletal elements such as the pubic symphysis and the sternal rib ends. These characteristics are used when determining the age of an individual. On the microscopic level, histological methods have been developed to determine the age of an individual based on changes in the microstructure of an element. While age at death estimations are based on a known sequence of change over time, time is not the only variable that effects bone morphology. Different pathologies and trauma can also alter skeletal elements. Just as disease processes and trauma act of signaling pathways in the body that cause changes in bone to occur, drug use also acts on the brain and can affect the same signaling pathways that are involved in bone regulation. It is hypothesized here that chronic cocaine use will have a detectable effect on bone morphology. The study sample used consisted of rats, some exposed to cocaine and others not. The experimental groups consisted of eleven Male Wistar Rats (Rattus norvegicus) from the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. The rat’s self-administered cocaine at a 0.3 mg/kg dosage and the concentration of the IV solution was 1.6 mg/ml of cocaine. The control group includes five female Sprague Dawley rats (Rattus norvegicus) from the Boston University Animal Science Center in Boston, Massachusetts. These rats were exposed to a training protocol but were not given any drugs prior. All samples went through a dissection and maceration process to obtain the femora and humeri. Mass, volume, and length measurements were taken for each element to be used for later analysis. One femur was chosen at random from each rodent to be used for histological analysis. Femora were embedded in a 2-part epoxy resin and then cut in half using a diamond band saw. A Buehler IsoMet Low Speed Saw was used to obtain thinner sections and a Buehler MetaServ 250 grinder was used to achieve a thickness of 100-120 μm. India ink was used for staining and all stained sections were put onto slides, covered with Permount and a cover slip, and labeled. Upon microscopic examination, it was determined that the outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness would be measured and compared between the experimental and control groups. Photographs were taken of each cross-section at 1x and 4x magnification through the NIS-element software. The ImageJ image-processing program was used for analysis. The thickness of the outer circumferential lamellar bone and the thickness of the total cross-section was taken at four random locations of each 4x magnification photograph. The ratio of the thicknesses and the outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness alone were compared. When comparing density values calculated from the original mass and volume measurements, a significant difference was found between the control and experimental groups. Samples that had been exposed to cocaine had lower density values than those not exposed to any drugs. The control group mean density equaled 1.492 g/mL and the experimental group mean density equaled 1.082 g/mL. A significant difference was found between the ratio of the thicknesses and between the outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness alone. The experimental group had ratio values significantly higher than the control group. The control groups mean ratio equaled 0.2686 while the experimental groups mean ratio equaled 0.4427. This indicates that in the control group, the outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness, on average, covered about 25% of the total cross-section, and the experimental groups outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness, on average, covered almost 50% of the total cross-section. These results were similar when comparing the outer circumferential lamellar bone thickness alone. The control groups thickness was significantly lower than the experimental groups thickness. The control group’s thickness measurements had a mean of 189.7674 μm and he experimental group’s thickness measurements had a mean of 343.2753 μm. These results are just the preliminary data that shows that chronic cocaine use does have an effect on bone morphology on a microscopic level. Only on histological characteristic was analyzed but there are many more traits that can be analyzed.

The identification of metabolic diseases is a crucial aspect of osteoarchaeological analysis and of paleopathological studies. This study is specifically concerned with the study of scurvy and its bony manifestation. This investigation considers the recognition of the bony lesions of scurvy in adult skeletons that originate from English archaeological contexts dating to the Post Medieval period. In order to identify scorbutic bony lesions, assemblages were analysed that derived from the Georgian period Navy that were known to suffer from endemic scurvy, namely Haslar hospital near Portsmouth and Stonehouse hospital in Plymouth. These assemblages were complemented by two Non-Naval skeletal collections of a broadly contemporaneous time period, one of which was a prison assemblage from Oxford Castle in Oxford and the other was from Darwen, Lancashire and consisted of a Primitive Methodist cemetery. For the purpose of this study, an extensive literature review was carried out and a specially modified scurvy recording form was created. In total three hundred and fifty-eight skeletons were analysed using the scurvy recording form on which a total of twenty-one potential scorbutic indicators were scored. The data was then subject to statistical analysis and a set of primary and secondary scorbutic indicators was established. The primary scorbutic lesions were femur, sphenoid, posterior maxilla, scapula, endocranial and mandible. Nine secondary lesions were also established and these were lesions of the foot, humerus, ulna, radius, hand, clavicle, innominate, fibula and the ectocranial surface of the skull. In total, 66.7% of the Haslar assemblage was found to have suffered from scurvy, followed by Plymouth with 20.6%, Darwen with 16.4% and Oxford Castle with 7.9%. It was found that scurvy could be identified in adult skeletal material through the recognition of a number of lesions that could not be attributed to any other disease process. The results indicated that scurvy was present in all of the skeletal collections studied but was more common in the Naval assemblages. This is an important development in the detection of scurvy in the archaeological record and is crucial in the reconstruction of past diets and metabolic disease patterns.

This dissertation investigates the emergence and development of cause-of-death registration in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. I examine the historical, demographic, sociopolitical, and theoretical conditions that gave rise to the first state-implemented cause-of-death registration system in the United States, Massachusetts's vital registration system. Developments in almost every arena of social life during the nineteenth century were shaped in some fashion through disease. The disease ecology changed dramatically during this period shifting from acute infectious to chronic degenerative diseases, which marked the beginning of the epidemiological transition. Registration systems were key components in this transitional period, providing the raw data on which nineteenth-century public health policy emerged. The greatest challenge that public-health reformers faced in implementing and regulating cause-of-death registration was standardizing the language and practice of disease and cause-of-death reporting. I look closely at issues of implementation and regulation and examine the relative impact that standardized nomenclature and reporting practices had on cause-of-death registration in Massachusetts from 1850 through 1912. Efforts to standardize disease and cause-of-death terminology in the United States and internationally did not, however, successfully emerge until the late nineteenth century. While many disease terms were in common, their diagnostic applications were not. I argue that certain constitutive and regulative features of death registration did not match up with the institutional mandate of Massachusetts's vital registration system until forty years after its implementation. The institution-building process required the alignment of these features as normative practices, culminating in the organized efforts of European and American medical professionals to instruct physicians in proper nomenclature through explicit references and sanctions in the 1900 International Classification of Diseases. The pragmatic conditions out of which both Massachusetts' cause-of-death registration system and the International Classification of Diseases emerged did not consist of special circumstances or unique cultural practices. The social meanings of mortality in nineteenth-century Massachusetts reflected the public commitments of a diverse set of communities and practices that shared similar resources in working out the struggles and triumphs of communicating the language of death and disease.

Although the pubic symphysis remains the most commonly utilized osteological feature to ascertain age-at-death estimations by forensic anthropologists (Garvin and Passalacqua, 2012), these aging methods do not accurately age elderly individuals. Through the re-examination of a Balkan sample, Berg (2008) noted a morphological variant, which may be correlated to osteoporosis expression by the increasing presence of macroporosity, present on female individuals that had previously been unexplained. This morphological variant can assist in the application of the Suchey-Brooks method to age elderly female individuals with the inclusion of a seventh phase (Berg, 2008). Hartnett (2010) also re-examined the pubic symphysis to better estimate age for modern populations and noted morphological variants similar to those described by Berg (2008). Hartnett (2010) attributed this variant to a decrease in bone quality associated with age-related morphological change. The present study examined the 330 female skeletons housed at Lisbon Collection, with the specific aim to provide a comparison of pubic symphysis age estimation methods, including Suchey-Brooks (1990), Berg (2008), Hartnett (2010), and Boldsen et al. (2002), on a known modern skeletal collection geographically dissimilar from the collections originally examined by Berg (2008) and Hartnett (2010). This dissimilar population was important because Berg's original study noted regional differences in the appearance and applicability of the seventh phase. The morphological variants present in female elderly individuals in the Lisbon Skeletal Collection support the introduction of a seventh phase to the standard Suchey-Brooks pubic symphysis method. Using the seventh phase, the Berg (2008) and Hartnett (2010) method improved their accuracy rates for aging older individuals. However, when the entire female population sample is considered the established age-at-death estimation methods do not perform well. The relationship between bone quality, aging method estimation assessment, and known age are discussed with considerations made for the influencing factors on bone preservation. A major difficulty in this analysis was parsing out information regarding bone density loss that occurred as natural degeneration and had a relationship to age-related change. The most significant confounding factor for the analysis of bone density loss and its importance to age-related change is the influence of bone preservation. While it is clear that the seventh phase provides more valuable information for the age estimation of the elderly, the poor correlation of bone quality suggests that this feature is not particularly important for the assessment of elderly phases in this population. This research supports the induction of a seventh phase to help provide more accurate age estimations for elderly populations, as it has been found in various populations, including the Portuguese population.

The present research examined the effects of compound bows and crossbows on the remains of Sus scrofa and Odocoileus virginianus. Isolated pig heads and white-tailed deer necks were impacted by three forms of arrow heads: the broad-head tip, conical field-tip, and bullet field-tip from both the compound bow and the crossbow. The structural design of the arrowheads was examined to understand their level of impact, as well as, the velocities of the compound bow and crossbow were calculated and compared. The total number of impact marks for the experiment was 55. It was hypothesized that the compound bow would have a greater extent of trauma to bone than the crossbow due to the higher velocity created from a longer power stroke. It was also hypothesized that the broad-head arrow tip will create larger fracture patterns on bone due to the three-blade-prong design compared to the oval shape of both the conical field-tip and bullet field-tip. Through the use of one-way ANOVA and Pearson’s Chi-Square, the results show no direct correlation between the difference in the type of weapon used or the arrow tip used. The results show the vast majority of impacts are penetration with shapes that roughly resemble the cross-section of the type of tip used. The results, however, did not support both hypotheses due to the limited number of impact marks and sample size of the experiment. Further experiments are required to assess the extent to which it is possible to distinguish between arrow related osseous trauma.

The present study analyzes cranial nonmetric traits used in forensic ancestry estimation on contemporary skeletal remains of modern European Americans in order to determine if there are statistically significant differences between males and females in trait expression. Research on cranial nonmetric traits for ancestry estimation has largely ignored the effects of sexual dimorphism on trait expression; however, there is growing evidence that some traits may be impacted by sex, among other variables. The 17 macromorphoscopic traits described in Hefner and Linde (2018) and the six mandibular morphoscopic traits described in Berg (2008) were scored on 97 females and 113 males from the Texas State University Donated Skeletal Collection in San Marcos, Texas. Chi-square tests were used to analyze if there are statistically significant cranial nonmetric trait expressions between males and females. From these tests, the results indicate that 14 out of the 23 cranial and mandibular nonmetric traits are statistically significantly different between the sexes, with a p-value less than 0.05. Gonial angle flare is the most significant feature, while the zygomaticomaxillary suture is the least significant feature. Additionally, correspondence analyses (CA) show the relationship between each cranial nonmetric trait score, that demonstrated significance, and both sexes. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that several nonmetric traits used in ancestry estimation are affected by sex; thus, it may be beneficial to develop sex-specific ancestry models for nonmetric traits.

This article considers forensic anthropologists’ roles in negotiating the concept of criminality in biohistorical cases, those investigations of the famous and infamous dead that are driven by public interest rather than traditional medicolegal relevance. We review three biohistorical cases from the United States: the purported skull of a martyred Catholic priest from sixteenth century Georgia, the Mountain Meadows Massacre that occurred in Utah in the mid-nineteenth century, and the search for Billy the Kid’s grave in New Mexico. We find that anthropologists have active and passive roles in the manufacture, assignment, and sometimes denial of criminality in these cases. Additionally we explore how the analysis and discussion of violence in these biohistorical cases reflects two concepts that are distinctive to United States’ history, notably manifest destiny and the idea of closure in historical narratives. The perception that the present order is a natural culmination of history, and that the past is truly past underestimates the relevance and impact of labelling past personages as criminals to contemporary culture. As a result, forensic anthropologists’ negotiation of criminality in U.S. biohistorical cases is fraught with nebulous ethical challenges and tangible consequences.

Sex estimation is one of the most important, and arguably the first, parts of the biological profile that is estimated for purposes of human identification. This study will examine the utility of the distal humerus in sex estimation. The goal of this research is to corroborate the usefulness of the distal humerus in sex estimation and the usefulness of geometric morphometrics in sex estimation, as well as validate metric and visual methods for sex estimation using the distal humerus. Multiple methods of sex estimation are necessary because complete skeletons are rarely found, and often only fragments are discovered. Three methods of sex estimation utilizing the distal humerus are used in this study: epicondylar breadth (n=448), nonmetric traits per Rogers (1999) and Vance et al. (2011 (n=444)), and geometric morphometrics via a Microscribe digitizer and MorphoJ software (n=227). The sample was taken from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection and was primarily composed of White Americans. The male to female ratio was approximately equal. The results of the metric aspect of the study showed a classification accuracy of 88.84% with low intra-observer and inter-observer error rates. The results of the nonmetric aspect of the study showed a classification accuracy of 77% when all traits were combined with low intra-observer and high inter-observer error rates. The results of the geometric morphometric aspect of the study showed a classification accuracy of 55% for all landmarks, 57% for anterior landmarks, and 63% for posterior landmarks. The results show that not only is the epicondylar breadth a reliable and effective method of sex estimation, it is easily repeatable by other observers. The nonmetric method is useful when epicondylar breadth cannot be measured or when an observer is familiar with the method. The geometric morphometric method is not as strong as the other two methods, but with further research and modifications may become a feasible option for sex estimation using the distal humerus. The author concludes that the distal humerus is sexually dimorphic and can be used to estimate sex accurately.