Opening the Cabinets: A Critical Evaluation of Skeletal Teaching Collections in the United States.

The collections of human remains within our university laboratories and classrooms are considered by many to be integral to teaching osteology. However, as an outgrowth of the Western scientific tradition of mind/body dualism, human remains within skeletal teaching collections are often regarded differently than those in museums or applied contexts. From processing to storage, the personhood of each individual becomes abstracted as we purchase, "inherit," handle, organize, and digitally scan their bones for teaching purposes.

Beyond the report: Prospects and challenges in forensic anthropological investigations of structural vulnerability.

Forensic anthropologists are increasingly interested in accounting for embodied marginalization in addition to the biological profile. A structural vulnerability framework, which assesses biomarkers of social marginalization in individuals within forensic casework, is worthwhile but its application must be informed by ethical, interdisciplinary perspectives that reject categorizing suffering within the pages of a case report. Drawing from anthropological perspectives, we explore prospects and challenges of evaluating embodied experience in forensic work.

Recommended Practices for Macerating Human Thyroid Cartilage.

Visible abnormalities on the thyroid cartilage may be indicative of perimortem trauma including fractures or sharp force trauma. During autopsy, the thyroid cartilage must be freed of surrounding soft tissue before these abnormalities can be clearly observed. Several processing methods were first experimentally tested on pig ears to narrow down which might work best to process human thyroid cartilage.