Which methods did you use to establish your ID?

Description: For this project you will be given access to information and images of skeletal evidence recovered from a wooded area. You will be using the provided materials to write a case report (see example in folder) and a supportive essay about the methods you used in your examination to obtain your results. Your Case Report will include:
•Skeletal inventory
•Description of processing/cleaning/reconstruction prior to analysis
•Minimum Number of Individuals
•Biological Profile (you will discuss which bones were used and what methods were used for each step):
a Sex
b Age
c Ancestry
d Stature
•Trauma and other alterations to the skeleton
•Identification comparison
You will also be writing a Supportive Statement about why you chose the analytical methods that you did and how you came to the conclusions you did about trauma/alteration and identification. So, for the biological profile, you need to condisder what bones are present in the case, how well preserved they are inorder to make decisions about which methods would be the best to use for your analyses. You will summarize how each method works (or what it is based upon), and discuss why you chose that method over others. If there is trauma or evidece of alteration, you will need to discuss how you determined these things (what different trauma patterns look like on bone, how we can tell if damage occurred on fresh bone versus dry bone, what may have caused these changes or damage, etc.) Finally, you will need to support your positive ID. Which methods did you use to establish your ID? How do the methods work? Are there other positive ID methods that you could use in this case? How do they work?
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to put into practice what you have learned over the course of this class through lecture, course materials, and your own research.
What you will be turning in:
•Case Report (worth 20 points)
•1-2 pages
•Supportive Statement (with citations and a bibliography) (worth 40 points)
•minimum of 5 pages (not including the bibliography)
•minimum of 6 appropriate scholarly sources – you may include your textbook as one source. At least 3 of your sources must be peer-reviewed.
Tips and Pointers: Tips on how to find resources, take notes, cite your sources and format your bibliography can be found in “How to Ace a Research Paper in Biological Anthropology” (in this folder).
There is also an example of a case report, so that you can see the degree of detail included in a case report.

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