This summer's short courses will begin the
first full week in June. Have a look at the 2007 short course home page or the flyer
[pdf ~0.8mb] for more information.
Mercyhurst College will be hosting the 22nd Annual Meeting
of the Northeast Forensic Anthropology Association (NEFAA) on October 27th-29th. Friday night we'll have a meet and greet.
Short presentations will be given by attendees on Saturday followed by a Halloween party Saturday night. On Sunday morning,
Dr. George Milner from Penn State University will be giving a workshop entitled: "Transition Analysis: A New Means of
Estimating the Age of Adult Skeletons". Everyone is invited and encouraged to attend, so we hope to see you at this year's
NEFAA! For more information and if you would like to present a paper please contact
Nick Passalacqua.
Dennis Dirkmaat, Steve Symes, Luis Cabo, and Anne M. Kroman of the Mercyhurst Archaeogical Institute
(Kroman, University of Tennessee - Knoxville)
recently traveled to Santiago, Chile for a three-day conference entitled "Primeras Jornadas
de Anthropología Forense Aplicada" jointly presented by the Unidad Especial de
Identificación de Detenidos Desaparecidos Servicio Médico Legal and the Department of Applied Forensic
Sciences at Mercyhurst College. In addition to lecturing, the group reviewed a number of human rights
cases with the Chilean Forensic Team. A brochure containing a syllabus and short bios of the group is
available in pdf (~2mb).
Steven A. Symes, Anne M. Kroman, Christopher W. Rainwater, Tyler A. Kress, Andrea L. Piper, and Ashley R. Kimminau
of the Mercyhurst Archaeogical Institute (Kroman,
University of Tennessee - Knoxville; Kress, BEST Engineering) presented a poster entitled "Bone Biomechanical
Considerations in Perimortem vs. Postmortem Thermal Bone Fractures: Fracture Analysis on Victims of
Suspicious Fire Scenes" at the 75th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists in Milwaukee, WI (2005). A pdf version the poster is available
here (~2mb). Be sure to check out
other research done at the Mercyhurst Archaeological
Institute.
Dennis C. Dirkmaat, PhD; Luis L. Cabo, MS; James M. Adovasio, PhD; (MAI), and Vicente Rozas, PhD (CIFA
Lourizán, Pontevedra, Spain) recently presented a paper entitled "Commingled Remains
and the Mass Grave: Considering the Benefits of Forensic Archaeology" at the 2005 American
Academy of Forensic Sciences Meetings in New Orleans, LA. A draft is available
here.
This draft is also the basis for the paper, "Forensic Archaeology, Mass Graves,
Human Rights, and Commingled Remains", presented at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society
for American Archaeology in Salt Lake City, UT (2005).
A Bibliography Related to Crime Scene Interpretation with Emphases in Forensic Geotaphonomic and Forensic Archaeological
Field Techniques(Eleventh Edition) has been updated by Special Agent Michael J. Hochrein through 2004. The document and more information is available here. The 2001 version is still available.
The Applied Forensic Sciences Department at Mercyhurst
College (part of MAI) serves as a regional center through which coroners and
law enforcement officials in PA, Ohio, New York, and West Virginia
can consult with forensic anthropologists on a wide variety
of cases that include outdoor searches, documentation of surface-scattered human remains, buried body features, fatal fire scenes, and mass fatality scenes as well as laboratory analyses that include determination of human vs. non-human remains, assignment of chronological age, sex, stature, ancestry, personal identification from radiographs, and the analysis of antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem trauma to the bone. Students
concentrating on Forensic Anthropology will have the opportunity
to participate in a number of forensic projects and cases conducted
by the department.
For more information about forensic anthropology at Mercyhurst College,
e-mail Dr. Dennis
Dirkmaat or Dr. Steve Symes
