What exactly does a forensic anthropologist do?

Question

I really like the show Bones, and I am interested in anthropology, but I don't know how it works to combine with forensics.

Thanks everyone for answering my question!!!

Answer 1

Good question!

Generally speaking forensic anthropology is the examination of human skeletal remains for law enforcement agencies to determine the identity of unidentified bones.

Over the past century physical anthropologists (those who study human remains) have developed methods to evaluate bones to figure out things about people who lived in the past. These techniques help them to answer questions about the remains they are studying.

The questions that might be looked into include: Was this individual male or female? How old were they when they died? How tall were they? Were the people studied in good or poor general health?

Forensic anthropology involves the application of these same methods to modern cases of unidentified human remains. Through the established methods, a forensic anthropologist can aid law enforcement in establishing a profile on the unidentified remains. The profile includes s*x, age, ethnicity, height, length of time since death, and sometimes the evaluation of trauma seen on bones.

Answer 2

Forensic anthropology is a branch of the forensic sciences concerned with the application of anthropological knowledge and methods to the process of law. In the most typical scenario a law enforcement agency finds skeletal remains and asks a forensic anthropologist for help in identifying who the deceased individual is. There are many other applications of forensic anthropology as well, including identifying war dead and victims of human rights abuses, and recovery of buried evidence in general.