The Analysis of Burned Human Remains

The Analysis of Burned Human Remains, Second Edition, provides a primary source for osteologists and the medical/legal community for the understanding of burned bone remains in forensic or archaeological contexts. It describes in detail the changes in human bone and soft tissues as a body burns at both the chemical and gross levels and provides an overview of the current procedures in burned bone study. Case studies in forensic and archaeological settings aid those interested in the analysis of burned human bodies, from death scene investigators to biological anthropologists.

A timely state-of-the-art analyses of burned bone studies for bioarchaeologists and forensic anthropologistsCovers the diagnostic patterning of color changes, the positioning of the body, and presence (or absence of soft tissues during the burning eventChapters on bones and teeth give step-by-step recommendations for hot to study and recognize burned hard tissuesNew chapters include improved analyses of thermally induced impacts on bone microstructure, development, and appearance; they also cover sites from a greater geographic range adding Alaska, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, and Southeast Asia

1. Fire and Bodies
2. Patterned Thermal Destruction in a Forensic Setting
3. Burned Human Teeth
4. Analysis of Human Cremains
5. Thermally Induced Changes 
6. Bone Color
7. Time, Temperature and Oxygen Availability
8. Heat-Related Changes in Tooth Color
9. Investigations on Pre-Roman and Roman Cremation Remains
10. In the Heat of Pyre
11. Fire as a Cultural Taphonomic Agent
12. Putting Together the Pieces: Reconstructing Mortuary Practices from Commingled Ossuary Cremains
13. A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site
14. Early Archaic Cremations from Southern Indiana
15. Towards an Archaeology of Cremation
16. An 11,500-year old Human Cremation from Eastern Beringia (Central Alaska)
17. Italian Iron Age cremations
18. The analysis of heat-induced crystallinity change in bone
19. Death and Community Identity in the Trincheras Cremation Cemetery, Sonora, Mexico
20. Formation times in thermally altered enamel
21. Influence of heating regimes on dimensional and colorimetric changes of teeth
22. The Use Of Ethnographic Information In Cremation Studies: A Southeast Asian Example
23. Bone Color Changes in a Burned Burial Structure from Early Bronze Age Bab adh-Dhra', Jordan