Video Transcript

Text slide: Special Agent Heather Threw describes the role of forensic anthropology at the FBI’s Recovery of Human Remains course.

Heather Thew, special agent, FBI Laboratory Division: The recovery process, in and of itself, is destructive, right?

Because as we dig, we are destroying the context. So we need to document as we process, just like any crime scene. It’s actually the exact same as any crime scene. Archeology in itself, because you’re digging up and uncovering evidence but you’re also taking away the context that evidence sat in—the layers of soil that were mixed, the temperature, anything else that’s associated with that burial—you’re taking it away as you’re collecting that evidence.

At the end, what you end up with is hopefully a nicely packaged bag of evidence. But you also have the information about where it came from, what situation it was in when you found it. Right?

We fully document how we find things in situ—in its original location—so that we can tell that story about how we found it.