Forensic Skeletal Trauma : Scientific Foundation and Guide to Professional Practice

Forensic Skeletal Trauma provides forensic practitioners with an illustrated manual for accurate and appropriate analyses of human skeletal trauma. Based on current anthropological, biomedical, and biomechanical research as well as recent national standards for trauma analysis developed by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences’ Academy Standards Board (ASB) and NIST’s Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), it provides practitioners with practical guidelines for documenting, describing, interpreting, and reporting both antemortem and acute (“perimortem”) skeletal trauma in a forensic anthropological and/or biomedical context. Summaries of the most current trauma research, supported by macro, micro, radiological, and other images, will provide practitioners with a definitive reference for differentiating trauma from other (e.g., pathological and postmortem) evidence and assist them with accurate reconstructions of the context of these traumatic events. It will also guide them in determining trauma timing and mechanism and variables which affect them, and provide advice for accurate reporting and testimony about trauma in the courtroom. In sum, it will serve as the definitive resource for human skeletal trauma analysis for forensic practitioners.