Linda L. Klepinger

I enjoyed reading this book. It gives a good overview of the state of affairs with forensic anthropology at the time of publication, which admittedly was 10 years ago, so there are some advances that are not discussed in this edition. Aside from the general background to forensic anthropology such as aging, sexing, MNI etc., it discusses uses in law enforcement. I liked the style, it was not overly academic and was actually quite funny in some places, such as discussing faults in understanding the limits of scientific procedure with one example of law enforcement hoping to get mDNA comparisons from a suspect's father and the father's ex-wife who was not the mother of the suspect...yeah. It also touches on the affect of certain TV shows not mentioned by name, but I am assuming CSI and perhaps Bones, where the reality of scientific methodology is often sped up or made to look a lot better than it actually is for the sake of a plot line (despite Kathy Reichs). The book suggests that jurors are influenced by these TV shows and are somewhat reticent to believe the limitations of forensics in the court room...no jurors, it isn't a 1 in a million chance that this DNA can be matched with someone else, more like 1 in 3000 if you take into account error margins. Of course, error margins are never discussed in TV shows, they are less dramatic. Anyway, I digress. I really enjoyed this overview. The bibliography is extensive and excellent for those who wish to discover more. Highly recommend if you are interested in human skeletons, forensics, population analysis, crime etc.… (mer)