The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Defense Central Identification Laboratory (DOD CIL) cosponsored the creation of the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Anthropology, or SWGANTH. The 20-member Board consists of professionals from the forensic anthropological community invited by the sponsors to represent a broad spectrum of expertise and jurisdictional involvement.
The charter of the SWGANTH is to identify and recommend “best practice” within the forensic anthropology discipline. To achieve this end, the SWGANTH has created Committees, which are populated by U.S. and international forensic anthropologists, to examine targeted issues for the purpose of identifying what is best practice today and what paths should be followed in the future. Individuals wishing to participate as Committee Members may indicate their interest to either of the SWGANTH’s officers.
For the purpose of the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Anthropology, Forensic Anthropology is succinctly defined as:
The application of anthropological methods, techniques, and theory to matters pertinent to civil or criminal law.
This definition is inclusive, not exclusive. Historically, at least in the United States, these “methods, techniques, and theory,” of Forensic Anthropology have been drawn almost exclusively from the anthropological sub-disciplines of human osteology and archaeology, and the “matters pertinent to civil or criminal law,” have been largely confined to (1) the detection of buried human remains, (2) the recovery of buried or scattered human remains, (3) the generation of a biological profile from skeletal remains for the purpose of individual identification, and (4) the interpretation of hard-tissue trauma. Certainly, while these aspects remain the core of Forensic Anthropology, this historical view has too often served to restrict the scope of the discipline.
But times are changing, and the field of Forensic Anthropology—long perceived (oftentimes disparagingly) as an “applied” twig on the otherwise “legitimate” academic field of anthropology—is at last emerging as a full-fledged sub-discipline in its own right. Concomitant with this emergence is the rapid, and in many respects, uncontrolled, expansion of the role and scope of Forensic Anthropology. Anthropology is, at its core as a science discipline, concerned with one thing and one thing only—human adaptation. It is, in fact, the idiosyncratic human adaptive response that forms the basis for Forensic Anthropology. But humans adapt in myriad ways that historically have been underappreciated and underutilized in the forensic realm. The rapid re-emergence of the field of biometrics in forensics is but one example. Biometrics was, at one time, the almost exclusive academic domain of anthropology. Long out of favor, it has burst onto the “post 9/11” forensic landscape with an intensity that has left little time for planning, organization, and standardization.
This expanding scope occurs at the same time as there is a growing acknowledgment by forensic anthropologists of the need for standardization of the procedures and protocols currently in practice—both in the “traditional” framework of Forensic Anthropology as well as in the expanding roles that the discipline is radiating into. Gone, or at least waning, are the halcyon days of individuals employing idiosyncratic techniques and methods that lead to findings by fiat. Increasingly, forensic anthropologists are employed in large governmental laboratories and are held to regulatory, statutory, and institutional guidelines that leave little room for deviation.
This paradigm shift of Forensic Anthropology from an “art” to a “science” should not be viewed negatively. It is a healthy evolution, and one, arguably, long overdue. The challenge facing its practitioners is not (or at least should not be) how to arrest the change, or failing to do that, to forestall it as long as possible, but rather the challenge should be to direct the field’s development into the most professional, efficient, and profitable pathway. Defining, while at the same time expanding, the boundaries of the discipline is the role of the SWGANTH.
The SWGANTH is not, by its chartering instrument, a regulatory board with any formal coercive authority. Rather, the SWGANTH aims to develop consensus guidelines, i.e., “best practices,” for the discipline of Forensic Anthropology, and to disseminate those guidelines to the broader forensic community. To this end, the SWGANTH will attempt to identify and codify existing standards, or, where clear standards don’t exist, to formulate and establish them.
