









































Forensic Anthropology Vol. 7, No. 4: 215–222
DOI: 10.5744/fa.2024.0003

Copyright © 2024 University of Florida Press

Introduction

In February 2022, the Anthropology Section celebrated its fif-
tieth anniversary as an officially recognized section of the 
American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS). This spe-
cial issue was the result of a symposium honoring that achieve-
ment. The aim of the articles included here is to explore the 
origins of the discipline, consider how it has grown and 
changed over the past 50 years, and discuss some general 
trends in its various aspects, such as shifts in its membership, 
the expansion of outdoor decomposition facilities, the contin-
ued inclusion of forensic anthropologists in the medicolegal 
system, and its efforts to reach a more diverse group of schol-
ars. The assorted group of contributing authors offers up vari-
ous visions related to where forensic anthropology has been, 
where it is now, and where it may go in the future.

Forensic anthropology is the application of anthropo-
logical method and theory to medicolegal matters, particu-
larly as they relate to the recovery and analysis of human 

skeletal material (Christensen et al. 2019). As such, it 
assesses various aspects of human remains contained within 
the physical environment as they relate to the legal system 
(Boyd & Boyd 2018). Moreover, focusing on the identifica-
tion of skeletonized, badly decomposed, burned, and other-
wise unidentifiable human remains may also be applied to 
human rights, humanitarian, warfare, mass fatality, and 
mass disaster contexts (Klepinger 2006). Though some-
times criticized as atheoretical (see Adovasio 2012), Boyd 
and Boyd (2018) have proposed that forensic anthropology is 
grounded in three forms of interacting theory: foundational 
theory— in this case, Darwin’s theory of evolution by means 
of natural selection— which grounds the discipline; inter-
pretative theory, which validates explanations generated via 
research to interpret specific events and forensic anthropo-
logical analyses; and methodological theory, which under-
girds our reasoning for why forensic anthropologists utilize 
certain protocols and analyses in both the field and the 
laboratory.

Early Forensic Anthropology

Early practitioners of what would become forensic anthro-
pology were primarily anatomists or medical professionals 
who used their knowledge of human skeletal anatomy to 
solve perplexing crimes (Bartelink et al. 2020; Bolhofner & 

INTRODUCTION

Introduction: Celebrating Fifty Years of Awareness, Change, 
and Progress in Forensic Anthropology

Katharine E. Kolpana,*

ABSTRACT: This article examines the origins and history of forensic anthropology. It pays particularly close attention to trends and 
developments in the discipline during the approximately 50- year period from the founding of the Anthropology Section of the American 
Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) in 1972 to the present. It highlights how narratives of the founding and expansion of North American 
forensic anthropology should be extended to include more notable foreign anatomists and anthropologists as well as theorists and practitioners 
of color. It explores how relationships between academic institutions and museums, such as the Smithsonian, led to partnerships with law 
enforcement agencies and more widespread professionalization, which continues to this day. Concerns surrounding professionalization con-
tributed to the founding of the AAFS Anthropology Section and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. This article considers the 
Anthropology Section’s founding and purpose and how the section has changed over time. It also discusses the expansion of educational 
programs and training, taphonomic research facilities, anthropological work in medical examiner’s and coroner’s offices, and military, mass 
fatality, humanitarian, and human rights work in forensic anthropology. The article concludes by reflecting on the impact of the Daubert 
ruling and whether it has appreciably affected and altered forensic anthropology in the United States.

KEYWORDS: forensic anthropology; history; American Academy of Forensic Sciences

aDepartment of Culture, Society, and Justice, University of Idaho, 
Moscow, ID, USA

*Correspondence to: Katharine E. Kolpan, Department of Culture,
Society, and Justice, University of Idaho, 875 Perimeter Drive, Moscow, 
ID 83844, USA 

E- mail: kkolpan@uidaho . edu

Received 23 January 2024; Revised 7 February 2024; Accepted
8 February 2024

mailto://kkolpan@uidaho.edu


Fifty Years of Change in Forensic Anthropology216 

Seidel 2019). These include well- known anatomists such as 
Oliver Wendel Holmes and his Harvard colleague Jeffries 
Wyman, who used their anatomical knowledge to contrib-
ute to the identification of murder victim George Parkman 
in 1849. The anatomical and odontological team in the Park-
man case determined the dismembered and calcined 
remains found in Harvard chemist John Webster’s labora-
tory and privy belonged to a single individual, most likely a 
50-  to 60- year- old White male who was around 5´10´́  tall, 
had been deceased for the approximate amount of time 
Parkman had been missing, and had been inexpertly disar-
ticulated by someone with limited anatomical knowledge; 
the remains also displayed no signs of anatomical prepara-
tion, indicating it was not a dismembered medical school 
cadaver (Snow 1982). The Parkman case displays several 
hallmarks of contemporary forensic anthropology cases in 
that it assessed human versus non- human remains, com-
mingling, the postmortem interval, the biological profile, 
idiosyncratic features of the decedent (Parkman’s dentures 
and the unique shape of his jaw), postmortem alteration of 
the body, and cause and manner of death (Snow 1982).

Another Harvard anatomist, Parkman Professor of Anat-
omy Thomas Dwight (1843– 1911), extensively researched the 
human skeleton and is credited with initiating interest in 
issues directly related to forensic anthropology. Dwight 
penned a prize- winning essay, The Identification of the 
Human Skeleton: A Medicolegal Study in 1878, and published 
widely on subjects, such as the estimation of age at death, 
stature, and biological sex, that have become hallmarks of 
modern forensic anthropological analysis (Ubelaker 2006). 
Dwight’s early contributions to the field were deemed signifi-
cant enough that Stewart (1979) dubbed him the “Father of 
Forensic Anthropology in the United States.”

The anthropologist and Field Museum Assistant Cura-
tor George Dorsey (1868– 1931) is often credited as the first 
American with a degree in anthropology to serve as an 
expert witness during the second Luetgert trial in 1897 
(Snow 1982). Adolf Luetgert stood accused of killing his 
wife Louisa and dissolving her body in a vat of potash in his 
sausage factory. Dorsey testified that he compared four 
small fragments of bone— a metacarpal, a pedal phalanx, 
pedal sesamoid, and a rib head— recovered from one of the 
factory’s vats to various zoological specimens in the Field 
Museum’s collections to ensure the remains were indeed 
those of a human female (Stewart 1978). The defense argued 
that the small fragments were from the animals used to 
make sausage, but they damaged the credibility of this claim 
when their expert witness mistook the remains of a dog’s leg 
for that of a monkey (Stewart 1978).

While the above contributions are important when 
assessing the origins of the discipline, the reality is that dis-
cussions of forensic anthropology in the United States tend 
to focus on the success and influence of early American 

anatomists and anthropologists, who were overwhelmingly 
White and male. However, as Passalacqua and Clever dis-
cuss in this special issue, the field owes a significant debt to 
the contributions of British anatomists. Passalacqua and 
colleagues pay special attention to Miriam Louise Tildesley, 
a little- known female British anatomist, who made signifi-
cant contributions to the standardization of anthropometric 
and osteometric data collection. Moreover, as Go et al. note, 
there are pioneers of color in forensic anthropology who 
have not received the attention or respect they deserve. To 
begin to rectify this, in this special issue, Go et al. discuss 
the significant forensic contributions immigrants and people 
of color, such as Caroline Stewart Bond Day, W. Montague 
Cobb, and Mahmoud El- Najjar, have made to forensic 
anthropology. Go et al. also highlight the contributions of 
Japanese anthropologists who assisted with wartime identi-
fications of American servicepeople as well as global foren-
sic pioneers of color, such as Joseph Auguste Anténor 
Firmin in France, Nicolás León Calderón in Mexico, and 
Sixto de los Angeles in the Philippines, whose work is often 
not as well acknowledged in the forensic anthropological lit-
erature (though for a more global perspective on forensic 
anthropology, see Blau and Ubelaker 2016; Ubelaker 2018; 
Ubelaker et al. 2019).

Consulting Work and the Beginnings of 
Professionalization in Forensic Anthropology

Forensic anthropologists can also currently be found as full- 
time state and federal government laboratory employees. The 
associations between anthropologists and governmental labo-
ratories that led to full- time employment for forensic anthro-
pologists first appeared in the late 1930s. While Snow (1982) is 
dismissive of the contributions of Hooton, Todd, and Hrdlička 
when it came to their involvement in forensic anthropology, 
Ubelaker (2006) notes that Hrdlička’s expertise in skeletal 
analysis and trauma came to the attention of his Washington, 
DC neighbors, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The 
FBI initiated a consulting collaboration between the FBI and 
the Smithsonian that was carried on by Hrdlička’s successors, 
T. Dale Stewart (1901– 1997), J. Lawrence (1915– 1986), and 
Douglas Ubelaker (Ubelaker 2006).

Hrdlička’s 1939 revised edition of his textbook Practical 
Anthropometry, which included forensic- related content, 
was published the same year that Wilton Krogman (1903– 
1987) published “A Guide to the Identification of Skeletal 
Material” in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, a paper that 
has been credited with ushering in the professional period in 
forensic anthropology (Stewart 1979; Ubelaker 2006). In 
1962, Krogman published an expanded version of this work 
as The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine. Krogman, like 
many forensic anthropologists, worked at a university and 



Kolpan 217

consulted with law enforcement part- time. However, the 
links created between professional medical and law enforce-
ment agencies by individuals like Krogman and Hrdlička 
demonstrated the utility and importance of professional 
forensic anthropological work and paved the way for dedi-
cated military and law enforcement forensic anthropology 
laboratories. Snow (1982:107) has suggested that medicolegal 
consulting created the moniker “forensic anthropologist,” 
which began appearing in scientific literature around 1970.

In this special issue, Passalacqua and Clever argue that 
Krogman’s work shapes what U.S.- based contemporary 
forensic anthropology practitioners recognize as “forensic 
anthropology.” Passalacqua and Clever further suggest that 
Krogman himself was influenced by a particular amalgama-
tion of U.S. and U.K. anatomists and anthropologists, 
namely T. Wingate Todd, Karl Pearson, and Sir Arthur 
Keith, whose work affected his ideas and practices.

The Formation of the AAFS Physical 
Anthropology Section and the American Board  
of Forensic Anthropology

The AAFS Physical Anthropology Section (currently the 
Anthropology Section) was founded at the AAFS meetings 
in Atlanta in 1972 under the pioneering direction of Ellis 
Kerley (1924– 1998) and Clyde Collins Snow (1928– 2014). 
Prior to 1970, the only two anthropologists who were mem-
bers of the AAFS, Wilton Krogman and Kerley himself, 
were consigned to the General Section (Snow 1982). By 
1971, the AAFS counted four anthropologists, two fellows 
and two members, among its ranks, with around a dozen or 
so others curious about joining, so Kerley decided there was 
enough interest to form a separate anthropology section 
(Kerley 1978). At the 1971 AAFS meetings in Phoenix, Kerley 
went to the Executive Board and, over the course of a single 
day, convinced them to eschew some of their more con-
servative policies, such as proof of sufficient interest in 
membership, to allow the formation of a new Physical 
Anthropology Section (Snow 1982). Kerley encountered 
Snow, who was not a member at the time, in the hotel restau-
rant, convinced him to help with the new section, and the 
two of them spent the afternoon using Snow’s Federal Avia-
tion Administration (FAA) emergency telephone card to 
contact their colleagues and recruit them to the cause; the 
following day, Kerley presented his list of a dozen or so 
potential members (at the time, the minimum number 
required for each section was 10), and the Executive Com-
mittee approved the new section (Snow 1982; Stewart 1979).

When it was founded, the Physical Anthropology Sec-
tion had only 14 members: George Armelagos, William M. 
Bass, Walter Birkby, Sheilagh Brooks, Alice Brues, Eugene 
Giles, Roger Heglar, Richard Jantz, Ellis Kerley, Richard 

McWilliams, Stephen Rosen, Clyde Snow, R. Gerry Snyder, 
and Audrey Sublett. Its founding year, it remained small 
enough that only five of its members attended the meeting 
and the four physical anthropology papers presented were 
given as part of joint sessions between Physical Anthropol-
ogy and Odontology, and Physical Anthropology and 
Pathology and Biology. Ellis Kerley and William M. Bass 
served as the Section’s first chair and secretary, respectively, 
while Charles P. Warren became its first program chair 
when the position was introduced in 1979. Though Bill 
Haglund served as co- chair with Alison Galloway in 1994, 
the practice of splitting the annual meeting program duties 
between a program chair and a co- chair did not become 
widespread until 2010, when Ann Ross became co- chair 
alongside William Belcher, who served as program chair.

In 1977, the Physical Anthropology Section, along with 
the Law Enforcement Assistant Administration, the Foren-
sic Science Foundation, and the AAFS, lent their support to 
Kerley as he spearheaded the founding of the American 
Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA) (Bartelink et al. 
2020; Kerley 1978). Kerley and colleagues established the 
ABFA in response to the recognition of the need “for some 
regularization of the practice of forensic anthropology, its 
acceptance by the courts, and the exclusion of those individ-
uals who have not prepared to practice forensic anthropol-
ogy or testify in court by virtue of training, experience, or 
research” (Kerley 1978:164). The ABFA remains the certify-
ing body for forensic anthropologists, administering the 
yearly Diplomate exam, and acts as the organization that 
sets standards for the proficiency of forensic anthropology 
practitioners. To qualify for Diplomate status, forensic 
anthropologists have traditionally been required to hold a 
PhD, submit case reports demonstrating their proficiency, 
present letters of support from other professionals familiar 
with their qualifications, and pass the written and practical 
sections of the yearly exam with a score of 80% on both 
sections (Bartelink et al. 2020).

The inclusion of a dedicated anthropology section at the 
AAFS annual meeting allows forensic anthropologists 
throughout North America and further afield to disseminate 
their own work and to explore the contributions of their col-
leagues. Presenting new research and casework at the 
annual meeting stimulates forensic anthropological activity 
and has increased the professionalization of the discipline 
(Ubelaker 2004 [2006]). Moreover, the Anthropology Sec-
tion’s activity has also created a greater awareness of their 
skills and capabilities among the Academy’s other sections, 
normalizing forensic anthropology as “part of the investiga-
tive process” (Ubelaker 2004 [2006]:202). Anthropologists 
have also been involved with the governance of the AAFS, 
and three anthropologists, Ellis Kerley (1990– 1991), Douglas 
Ubelaker (2011– 2012), and Laura Fulginiti (2022– 2023), 
have all served as the organization’s president.



Fifty Years of Change in Forensic Anthropology218 

In 2013, the section membership voted to change the 
name of the section to Anthropology because it was consid-
ered more inclusive and more accurately reflected the con-
tributions of those working in the forensic anthropology 
discipline, particularly archaeologists (Ubelaker 2018). The 
name change is perhaps unsurprising since Snow (1982:97) 
had suggested that nonspecialist physical anthropologists 
possessed knowledge and skills applicable to medicolegal 
problems beyond the narrow scope of “skeletal identifica-
tion” in the early 1980s. The name change reflects the field’s 
expansion beyond skeletal variation and into other realms 
such as genetics, biogeochemistry, demography, computa-
tional biology, and cultural anthropology (Algee- Hewitt 
et al. 2018:5).

When the Anthropology Section was founded, to be 
considered for membership, applicants were required to 
hold a master’s degree in physical anthropology, with two 
years of active experience in forensic anthropology, or to 
hold a PhD with one year of active experience (Kerley 1978). 
Both master’s and PhD applicants were also required to be 
actively engaged in forensic science or to have significantly 
contributed to physical anthropology methodology or litera-
ture (Kerley 1978).

Changes in matriculation patterns at both the master’s 
and PhD levels are part of an article written for this special 
issue by Kolpan and Williams that assesses trends among the 
Anthropology Section members from its founding in 1972 
through the present. Using AAFS membership data from the 
past 50 years, as well as a smaller data set with significant 
AAFS member participation that includes expanded informa-
tion related to matriculation, mentorship, and professional 
practice, Kolpan and Williams explore trends such as the 
expansion of women in the discipline over time, in addition to 
how student members continue to be a large part of the Sec-
tion’s makeup. Kolpan and Williams also note trends in the 
development and expansion of forensic anthropology mas-
ter’s and PhD programs and formal and informal academic 
and professional mentorship over time.

The Postmortem Interval and Taphonomic 
Studies in Forensic Anthropology

Over the past 50 years, forensic anthropologists have also 
become increasingly involved with estimations of the post-
mortem interval (PMI) and the taphonomic processes that 
affect the human body from the time of death to recovery of 
the remains. Dirkmaat et al. (2008) have suggested that the 
increasing focus on forensic taphonomy represents a para-
digm shift in which the acquisition of contextual data has 
transformed forensic anthropology from a laboratory- based 
endeavor mostly interested in human identification (see 

Işcan 1988) to a subdiscipline with a larger field component, 
providing practitioners with a broader role regarding crime 
scene investigation. Moreover, understanding what happens 
to the human body as it decomposes and how taphonomic 
processes can alter this process are key components in 
assessing the PMI and dispersal of the remains, and may 
also shed light on confusing aspects of the crime scene 
(Haglund & Sorg 1997, 2002; Pokines 2022; Pokines & 
Tersigni- Tarrant 2017; Ubelaker 1997).

Taphonomic studies rely on actualistic models based on 
the forensic practitioner’s observations of taphonomic pro-
cesses and the effects and/or patterns they produce, as well 
as Hutton’s geological principle of uniformitarianism, 
which posits that present- day processes functioned the same 
way in the past and therefore have the same effects (Lyman 
1994; Westcott 2018). To study rates of decomposition in 
variable climates with different types of weather and dispa-
rate taphonomic conditions, forensic anthropologists con-
duct experiments with willed cadavers at outdoor research 
facilities often colloquially referred to as “body farms.” 
Studies conducted at these outdoor forensic taphonomy 
research facilities indicate that data— particularly that 
which pertain to PMI— are only applicable within the sur-
rounding environment, highlighting the need to establish 
these types of facilities at other locations and in other cli-
matic environments around the world (Williams et al. 2019).

Historically, the first of these facilities was the brain-
child of University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) profes-
sor William M. Bass. Bass developed the idea for what 
became the Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) after 
he declared the death of long- deceased Civil War Lieutenant 
Colonel William Shy to have occurred in the past year due 
to the colonel’s remarkable state of preservation (Bass & 
Jefferson 2004). In the case of Colonel Shy, the embalming 
process and his cast iron coffin had prevented his body from 
decomposing until it was disturbed by vandals in 1977 (Jantz 
& Jantz 2008). As Bass researched how environmental fac-
tors (soils, weather [temperature, humidity, precipitation, 
etc.], fauna, flora, etc.) and human intervention (embalming, 
coffin type, weight, clothing choice, etc.) affected the rate of 
decomposition, he realized there was not much available 
research concerning how to determine the postmortem 
interval (Bass & Jefferson 2004; Jantz & Jantz 2008). Thus, 
the time seemed right for a human decomposition research 
facility, and in 1980, UTK broke ground on the ARF, which 
many people simply recognize as the Body Farm.

While there were no forensic taphonomy experimental 
research facilities when the Anthropology Section was 
founded in 1972, today, there are several outdoor research 
facilities in North America alone. In this special issue, Con-
nor et al. highlight the contributions of these North Ameri-
can facilities, as well as facilities further abroad in places 



Kolpan 219

like Australia, to examine how actualistic and experimental 
taphonomic studies have developed over time and space, 
and to discuss how they can contribute to forensic anthro-
pology as a field of study.

Forensic Anthropology and Medical Examiner 
and Coroner Systems

Though scholars with specialized osteological training 
have been consulting with law enforcement agencies since 
the time of Holmes and Wyman, interest in hiring forensic 
anthropologists as full- time employees at medical examin-
er’s and coroner’s offices began in the late 1970s; Hugh 
Berryman was hired as the first full- time forensic anthro-
pologist at the Shelby County Medical Examiner’s Morgue/
University of Tennessee Hospital Morgue in Memphis, 
Tennessee, in 1980 (Berryman & Lanfear 2012). As Berry-
man and Lanfear (2012) note, medical examiner’s and cor-
oner’s offices originally had a difficult time justifying 
financing for a dedicated forensic anthropologist, often 
requiring forensic anthropologists to also conduct other 
administrative and laboratory duties, such as histology, 
radiology, and fingerprint analysis. For example, in 2000, 
the chief medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Med-
ical Examiner (OCME) in New York City was skeptical 
there would be sufficient casework to justify hiring a 
forensic anthropologist, so he suggested Amy Zelson 
Mundorff, the first forensic anthropologist at the OCME, 
cross- train in serology (Berryman & Lanfear 2012). Zel-
son Mundorff never ended up conducting any serological 
work, but the tradition of forensic anthropologists fulfill-
ing other roles, such as death investigators, photographers, 
and mass fatality coordinators, at medical examiners’s and 
coroner’s offices has continued (Austin & Fulginiti 2008; 
Berryman & Lanfear 2012; Rainwater et al. 2012). More-
over, as forensic anthropology experienced a recent para-
digm shift that broadened the field’s conceptual framework 
and created greater appreciation for forensic archaeology, 
forensic taphonomy, and trauma analysis, it also expanded 
work possibilities for forensic anthropologists working in 
medical examiner’s and coroner’s offices (Dirkmaat et al. 
2008; Rainwater et al. 2012).

In this special issue, Fleischman et al. explore the 
expanded role that forensic anthropologists have played in 
medical examiner’s and coroner’s offices over the past 
50 years. Fleischman et al. also highlight the importance of 
laboratory accreditation and professional certification in 
forensic anthropology and discuss how the expansion of the 
forensic anthropology skillset will likely benefit forensic 
anthropologists when it comes to future hiring practices at 
these institutions.

Forensic Anthropology, Warfare, and 
Identification from Mass Casualty, Humanitarian, 
and Human Rights Contexts

The repatriation efforts of the U.S. military during World 
War II (WWII) led to the first full- time employment for 
physical anthropologists conducting identification work, 
and it brought forensic anthropology onto a broader stage, 
allowing it to receive recognition outside the court system 
(Kerley 1978). Though the United States had long attempted 
to recover and repatriate its war dead, the over 400,000 
American servicemembers who were killed in WWII solid-
ified the need for a systematic approach to its search and 
recovery procedures, as well as its identification efforts 
(Emanovsky & Belcher 2012; Holland et al. 2008; Hoshower 
1998). Many of these individuals’ remains decomposed and 
skeletonized before they could be recovered, necessitating 
the expertise of skilled osteologists. Recognizing the need, 
the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) of the 
U.S. Quartermaster opened the Central Identification Labo-
ratory (CIL) in Hawaii in 1947 and employed osteologists 
such as Charles Snow and Mildred Trotter to identify the 
remains of WWII service personnel from the Pacific The-
ater (Holland & Tersigni- Tarrant, 2012; Stewart 1979). 
When the original CIL was shuttered in 1949, it was followed 
by a series of temporary laboratories to aid with military 
identifications from the Korean and Vietnam Wars before a 
permanent CIL with an expanded mission to recover and 
identify the remains of all missing and unaccounted for 
Americans from past military conflicts was established on 
Hickam Airforce Base (Holland & Tesigni- Tarrant 2012). 
During this time, anthropologists at the CIL conducted 
 pioneering research, such as Trotter’s stature regression 
equation work and McKern and Steward’s pubic symphysis 
age estimation casts (McKern & Stewart 1957; Trotter & 
Gleser 1952, 1958). The anthropologists and archaeological 
scientific leadership at the CIL spent many years practicing 
and refining their field and lab approaches, and their 
laboratories— now located in both Hawaii and Omaha— 
currently set the standard when it comes to the investigation, 
search, recovery, and analysis of war dead (Passalacqua 
et al. 2016). Presently, the CIL is part of the Defense POW/
MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and is one of the preemi-
nent employers of forensic anthropologists in the world, as 
well as the world’s largest skeletal identification laboratory 
(Passalacqua et al. 2019).

Forensic anthropologists have also become increasingly 
involved in humanitarian and human rights work. This often 
occurs because the bodies of the deceased remain unrecov-
ered and unidentified over long periods of time, allowing 
them to decompose and/or skeletonize, thus necessitating 
the osteological expertise of a forensic anthropologist. 



Fifty Years of Change in Forensic Anthropology220 

Though humanitarian and human rights organizations such 
as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; 
established in 1863) have existed for far longer than forensic 
anthropology has been an anthropological discipline, foren-
sic anthropologists’ work in nonmilitary humanitarian and 
human rights contexts is often credited to Clyde Collins 
Snow’s work with Argentine collaborators, such as Mer-
cedes Doretti and Luis Fonderbrider, to identify the remains 
of individuals kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and buried in 
clandestine graves during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976– 
1983) (Ubelaker 2018). Prior to Snow’s involvement, Argen-
tina had been employing the services of gravediggers and 
firefighters to exhume the remains of the missing from 
unmarked cemetery graves, as well as forensic scientists 
with no training in skeletal analysis to identify the deceased 
(Doretti & Fonderbrider, 2001). When this strategy proved 
ineffective, the National Commission on the Disappearance 
of Persons and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo 
requested aid from the Science and Human Rights Program, 
a part of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, who sent seven scientists, including Snow, to 
Argentina (Doretti & Fonderbrider 2001). Snow’s work with 
local, mostly student, archaeologists and anthropologists 
resulted in the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team 
(EAAF), an internationally recognized organization that 
has worked to identify victims of state- sponsored violence 
in many countries worldwide, and served as a template for 
other regional organizations, such as the Forensic Anthro-
pology Foundation of Guatemala and the Peruvian Forensic 
Anthropology Team (Ubelaker 2018; Ubelaker et al. 2019).

Though often used interchangeably, humanitarian and 
human rights investigations differ because humanitarian 
work does not include judicial prosecution (Guyomar’ch & 
Congram 2017). The Geneva Conventions and the Conven-
tion on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of 
Genocide protect the right to life and the right to justice, and 
violations of these rights are subject to investigation, even in 
contexts where there is no criminal medicolegal mandate 
(Guyomar’ch & Congram 2017). International humanitarian 
law requires that individuals search for the dead, maintain 
their dignity, identify and return them to their families, indi-
cate the location of their graves, and provide families with 
access to both the deceased and the gravesite (Guyomar’ch 
& Congram 2017). Thus, the focus is on families and com-
munity stakeholders and their right to know what happened 
to their loved ones and to reclaim their bodies should they 
wish to do so. In humanitarian contexts, there is less empha-
sis on traumatic injury and the cause and manner of death, 
and the mandates of international organizations may even 
prevent them from examining trauma- related aspects of 
these investigations to maintain the principle of neutrality 
(Guyomar’ch & Congram 2017).

Expert Witness Testimony and the Legacy  
of Daubert

Forensic anthropologists also serve as expert witnesses who 
receive subpoenas and testify in a court of law. The legal 
landscape surrounding the admissibility of expert witness 
testimony has changed over the past 50 years. When the 
AAFS Anthropology section was founded, the admissibility 
of expert witness testimony was determined via the Frye 
rule. The Frye rule is based on a 1923 District of Colombia 
Appeals Court decision, Frye v. United States, that states 
scientific expert testimony is admissible if a technique is 
“generally accepted” as reliable by the expert’s scientific 
community (Grivas & Komar 2008:771).

In 1975, Congress attempted to provide trial process 
clarification for the federal judicial system by passing the 
Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) (Grivas & Komar 2008). 
FRE Rule 702 defined who qualified as an expert witness 
and when expert witness testimony is applicable, but it did 
not provide guidelines regarding the relevance or reliability 
of scientific methodologies, so general acceptance in the 
scientific community as outlined in the Frye rule continued 
as the general standard in state and federal courts (Grivas & 
Komar 2008).

In 1989, the parents of Jason Daubert and Eric Schuller 
filed a lawsuit against Merrell Dow, alleging the pharma-
ceutical company’s morning- sickness drug Bendectin was 
the cause of their children’s birth defects. During the trial, 
scientific evidence establishing a relationship between Ben-
dectin and birth defects was ruled inadmissible because it 
did not meet the Frye rule’s general acceptance criterion 
(Christensen & Crowder 2009). However, in 1993, in 
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme 
Court handed down a decision that indicated FRE Rule 702 
superseded the Frye rule. The Court proposed examining 
three areas of inquiry to determine admissibility: the 
expert’s qualifications; the validity and dependability of 
methods, techniques, and scientific theories put forward 
(referred to as reliability by the Court); and the expert testi-
mony’s relevance to the case at hand (Lesciotto 2015). Addi-
tionally, the Court decided trial judges should determine 
whether expert testimony is reliable and relevant (Chris-
tensen & Crowder 2009). Recognizing that trial judges are 
not scientific experts, the Court provided general guidelines 
for determining the reliability of exert testimony, such as 
whether the theory, method, or technique has been tested, 
submitted for peer review, and published; has a known error 
rate; has standards for controlling the technique; and is gen-
erally accepted within the scientific community (Chris-
tensen & Crowder 2009; Lesciotto 2015).

In the wake of the Daubert ruling, forensic anthropolo-
gists have raised concerns about the admissibility of more 



Kolpan 221

subjective or qualitative methods, worried that standard 
practices and techniques in the field would be excluded 
based on the new guidelines (Christensen 2005; Christensen 
& Crowder 2009; Dirkmaat et al. 2008). This has led to an 
increase in published studies testing the validity of previ-
ously established forensic anthropological methods (Dirkmaat 
et al. 2008). Examining both pre-  and post- Daubert forensic 
anthropology cases that address the admissibility of the 
forensic anthropologist’s testimony, Lesciotto (2015) found 
there was no rise in the exclusion of forensic anthropologi-
cal testimony post- Daubert. Lesciotto (2015) suggested this 
could be due to the field shifting toward more objective, 
quantifiable methods in anticipation of greater technical 
scrutiny under Daubert.

To test this idea, here Lesciotto examines every anthro-
pological article published in the Journal of Forensic Sci-
ences between 1972, when the AAFS Anthropology Section 
was established, and 2020 that mentions methods and tech-
niques related to the biological profile, a core component of 
forensic anthropology casework. Lesciotto breaks down the 
biological profile into its elemental components (age, sex, 
ancestry/population affinity, stature), sorts the methods and 
techniques related to each component based on whether they 
are objective or subjective and quantitative or qualitative, and 
examines the results to analyze whether there has truly been 
a shift from qualitative, subjective methods toward quantita-
tive, objective methods in forensic anthropology over time 
and how that potential shift is related to Daubert.

Conclusion

Since the founding of the AAFS Physical Anthropology 
Section in 1972, the field has undergone significant changes, 
broadening in scope and becoming more rigorous in method 
and technique. The name change to Anthropology, as rati-
fied by the Section membership in 2014, indicates that foren-
sic anthropologists recognized that the scope of work and 
types of expertise valuable to the field have widened since 
the section was established. That said, looking back into the 
past also has merit in that it allows the AAFS Anthropology 
Section, its members, and all forensic anthropology practi-
tioners to address contributions from scholars that may have 
been overlooked and overshadowed as hegemonic narra-
tives about how forensic anthropology became the field as it 
is currently recognized prevailed. This special issue 
includes contributions from authors who are reevaluating 
forensic anthropology’s earlier history in ways that may 
change how we view and discuss forensic anthropology as 
practiced in the United States today. Additionally, it assesses 
trends in the Section’s membership, as well as changes to 
master’s and PhD programs and academic and professional 

mentorship in forensic anthropology from the time of the 
Section’s founding to the present. It also endeavors to assess 
how changes over the past 50 or so years have altered our 
understanding of experimental research related to taphon-
omy and the PMI, the place of the forensic anthropologist in 
medical examiner’s and coroner’s offices, and how court 
rulings such as Daubert have influenced forensic anthropo-
logical methods and techniques. This type of self- 
examination encourages forensic anthropology to critically 
reflect on its own history, so it can promote a stronger disci-
pline going forward.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge helpful commentary from 
Dr. Nicholas V. Passalacqua and Dr. Sara Getz during the 
 formation and writing of this article, as well as the guidance 
provided by anonymous reviewers. She also thanks all the 
authors who tirelessly contributed to this special issue.

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