Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports June 2021
A four-stage approach to re-associating fragmented and commingled human remains
Bourgeois RL, Bazaliiskii VI, McKenzie H, Clark TN, Lieverse AR
Bioarchaeological and forensic anthropological methods are limited in their ability to re-associate human skeletal remains that have been both fragmented and commingled. Although many methods for individualizing commingled remains exist, they are rendered ineffective when the level of fragmentation is high. In these contexts, human remains are often approached similarly to faunal assemblages, regarded as sets of fragmented elements rather than as groups of fragments representing an individual. This paper introduces a new, four-stage approach to identifying discrete [...]