Race and the Role of Sociocultural Context in Forensic Anthropological Ancestry Assessment

The C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory (CAPHIL) was asked to perform osteological analyses on unidentified remains by a regional Medical Examiner’s Office to aid in decedent identification and determination of cause of death. Analyses at the CAPHIL revealed the remains were those of a young adult male with indications of high-velocity projectile trauma to the thorax. The perimortem trauma findings were fairly straightforward, but the ancestry assessment spurred discussion among the practitioners, and thus constitutes the focus of this chapter.40