Protocol of Forensic Anthropology of the School of the School of Legal Medicine of Madrid

Abstract

One of the first decisions that must be taken in the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory when studying bone remains is to define the anthropological measurements to be determined and the purpose of these measurements or the information they can provide us when attempting to establish the identity of an individual.

Many of these measurements are already standardized and are used worldwide in different laboratories of Forensic Anthropology. The value obtained from these anthropological measurements and the information they can provide us with depend to a great degree on the experience and skill of the investigator. For this reason, they should be the simplest possible, easy to determine and clear as far as explanation.

In the School of Legal Medicine in Madrid we use, since its publication in 1994, the protocol of Janz et al of the University of Tennessee, since we consider that it includes the principal anthropological measurements which should be determined.

In the year 2000, Pablo del Río in his doctoral thesis, reviews the most common anthropological measurements and suggests the necessity to elaborate a new protocol of anthropological measurements which includes some of the regular measurements, some are added and others are rejected.

The objective of this work is to elaborate a protocol which could be useful to the forensic anthropologist when studying bone remains in the laboratory. For this, basic anthropometric measurements must be established leaving the possibility open to use some additional means which could assist us in the study of special cases.