Department of Anthropology

  • MSU Department of Anthropology holds Human Remains Excavation Course for Michigan State Police

    By Katie Nicpon

    Caption: The MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab facilitated a training session in Lansing for members of the Michigan State Police force. The training involved how to properly excavate and handle remains. The skeletons used for the training were made of plastic. Photo credit: Jacqueline Hawthorne, MSU College of Social Science photographer. 

    In September, the MSU Department of Anthropology offered their four-day, Human Remains Excavation Course for Michigan State Police officers and laboratory personnel. 

    “This training is important for us to expand our skillset and provide the best and highest quality response for the community,” Christina Rasmussen said. She works for the Michigan State Police in the Lansing Forensic Lab and was one of 17 participants in the training. 

    This training provides an overview of how forensic anthropology can contribute to investigating deaths, and the appropriate methods investigators should follow when they are searching for and recovering actual human remains (although the skeletons used for training are made of plastic). 

    “This training is important, as service to the community is a pillar of our practice,” Dr. Carolyn Isaac said. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Science, and the director of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL). She collaborated with Anthropology Associate Professor Joe Hefner, PhD., on the training, in addition to receiving help from graduate students including Rhian Dunn, Micayla Spiros, Clara Devota, and Holly Long.

    “We often partner with law enforcement to aid in the search and recovery of human remains and it is essential that we all understand the appropriate techniques to ensure all of the skeletal remains and evidence at the scene are collected. We also want to create relationships with our law enforcement colleagues so they know they can call us to assist in such recoveries.” 

    The training includes a combination of lectures and hands-on experience. Lectures feature topics such as how to assess sex, age, ancestry, and stature from skeletal remains; identifications using comparative radiography, skeletal trauma analysis; and forensic archaeology. 

    The department also provides a hands-on osteology (bone) laboratory so participants can try to identify the various features of the biological profile in the skeletal remains. 

    One afternoon is dedicated to forensic entomology (how the study of insects can contribute to the death investigation) and a field demonstration of decomposition and the collection of insects of interest. Ryan Kimbirauskas, PhD, a board-certified forensic entomologist and MSU faculty in the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science hosted this part of the training. 

    “On the third day (excavation day) teams search for, systematically excavate, recover, and document simulated clandestine burials (plastic skeletons that we buried back in May),” Dr. Isaac said. “From this exercise, they prepare presentations on their excavations and present them on the last day.” 

    Caption: The MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab facilitated a training session in Lansing for members of the Michigan State Police force. The training involved how to properly excavate and handle remains. The skeletons used for the training were made of plastic. Photo credit: Jacqueline Hawthorne, MSU College of Social Science photographer. 

    On excavation day, participants are divided into a number of teams to perform line searches and probing to detect where the simulated clandestine burials are located. Once the burial locations have been determined, they begin the systematic excavation, ensuring thorough mapping and photography of the process are completed. 

    “The goal is to expose the skeleton to understand the position of the remains and any associated evidence when they were placed into the ground,” Dr. Isaac explained. “During this process they learn how to detect clandestine graves or soil disturbances, utilize soil probes to determine the outline of the burial, set up a grid over the burial for mapping, carefully remove  soil from above the remains to ensure they are not disturbed, screen soil to find any small portions of bones or evidence, pedestal the bones (i.e. removing enough soil to expose the bones but not too much where they will fall out of place), and how to take coordinates of the skeletal remains to produce a map for documentation purposes.” 

    For Rasmussen, one key takeaway was the need to approach each scene differently but collaboratively. 

    “I learned the importance of being creative and innovative since each scene is different,” she said. “Working together as a team is the only way to effectively process a scene.”

    The Human Remains Excavation course has a rich and long history that spans several decades. The training course was established by Dr. Norm Sauer, founder of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, back in the 1990s, and it continued when Dr. Todd Fenton took over the directorship of the lab in 2012. 

    “The MSUFAL relationship with the MSP has been around for a long time and represents years of working together on complex forensic recoveries, death investigations ranging from suspicious deaths to multiple homicides, and everything in between,” Dr. Hefner said. “We are fortunate to have such a strong bond with the state law enforcement, and these courses provide us an opportunity to give back to the community outside of our normal academic duties.” To learn more about the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab, visit anthropology.msu.edu.

    watrall

    ,
    ,

  • Forensic Anthropology in the News

    MSU Forensic Anthropology continues to bring answers and closure for the families of tragedies. When unidentified human remains were found on private property in northern Kent County, Wyoming Department of Public Safety called in MSU forensic anthropologist, Dr. Joe Hefner to identify the remains. They were the remains of Charles Oppenneer, a victim of the ‘Craigslist killer’. Dr. Hefner and the MSU forensic anthropology team determined the cause of death and positively ID’d the man, offering closure for the family of Mr. Oppenneer, who had been missing since 2014. Hefner and the MSU team also provided invaluable evidence for the police department. You can read the full story here. Our sympathies go out to Mr. Oppenneer’s family and friends.

    Dr. Joe Hefner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, was also quoted in a recent Washington Post article where he discussed the Easter terrorist bombing in Sri Lanka. Hefner, a board-certified forensic anthropologist who assisted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, provided The Washington Post with his expert perspective on the incredible challenges in identifying victims in a disaster of this magnitude.

    man looking at xrays of a human chest

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

    watrall

    , ,

  • Dr. Hefner and NIJ Helping to Identify Children

    Dr. Joseph T. Hefner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University, and Dr. Nicholas Herrmann, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University, received a National Institute of Justice award to improve the accuracy of age estimates for unidentified remains of children and adolescents. The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and Triservice Orthodontic Residency Program, 59th Dental Group will also collaborate on this research.

    The project entitled, “Investigation of subadult dental age-at-death estimation using transitional analysis and machine learning methods,” was funded for approximately $900,000 and focuses on tooth root and crown development to estimate age in children and adolescents using transition analysis and machine learning methods. Currently, standard methods often underestimate the age of children and adolescents by one to more than two years as age increases.

    Their goal is to provide forensic anthropologists and odontologists an accurate and precise age estimation method using a large, demographically diverse, modern sample of children and adolescents by collecting data from radiographs obtained from living children and adolescents from different populations in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa and other locations around the world.

    Dr. Hefner states, “as forensic anthropologists, we are routinely involved in the identification effort when unidentified human remains are discovered. Refined age estimates are a critical component of identification, especially when the skeletal remains under examination belong to a child.”

    To read the rest of this newsletter, click here.

    watrall

    , , ,

  • Featured Faculty: Dr. Joe Hefner

    Featured Faculty: Dr. Joe Hefner

    Dr. Joe Hefner reading an articleDr. Joe Hefner joined the Department of Anthropology in the Fall semester of 2014 as an assistant professor in forensic anthropology. He currently teaches graduate level Human Osteology and Multivariate Statistical Analysis along with undergraduate Introduction to Physical Anthropology, Hominid Fossils and Time, Space and Change. Previously, Dr. Hefner worked as a contract archaeologist throughout the Southeastern United States and then at Mercyhurst College after completing his PhD in 2007 from the University of Florida.

    Joe reports stumbling into anthropology inadvertently during his undergraduate studies at Western Carolina University. As a philosophy/art/psychology major, he took an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course and became hooked, deciding to change his major and declare social/cultural anthropology. Eventually, he found himself enrolled in archaeological field school and the rest is history as they say. From that moment on, Joe knew he wanted to do something with archaeology for the rest of his life. A few years after this, he discovered forensic anthropology and headed to Florida. As a graduate student, the young Dr. Hefner struggled to understand how forensic anthropologists were estimating ancestry. Prior to his latest research, estimating ancestry was an experience-driven, subjective approach that did not sit well with him. First, Joe felt he was not patient enough to become an expert and second, he believes that subjectivity should have no place in the field of forensic anthropology.

    Dr. Hefner’s work investigates cranial morphology (cranial macromorphoscopic traits) as an indicator of geographic origin (i.e., ancestry in forensic anthropology). He examines modern individuals housed in skeletal collections around the world, collecting data on slight variations in the skull to estimate where these individuals originate from geographically. Because of the nature of estimation and classification in forensic anthropology, Dr. Hefner also works with statistical modeling. Traditionally that has included standard methods like discriminant function analysis, but computing power today has expanded new research horizons. Machine learning models are very popular now and, since he works with categorical data, many of those methods are more appropriate than traditional models that require a normal distribution.

    Joe’s favorite part of his research is his love for data analysis and coming up with novel approaches to old questions. These reasons are why he is constantly trying to develop better analytical methods for classification analysis. Forensic anthropologists have been using many of the same methods since the fields inception. While these methods have been tested and hold true, Dr. Hefner wants to break out of those familiar paradigms. This means reading a lot of the literature from numerical ecology and machine learning.
    Dr. Hefner enjoys the department and his colleagues. Dr. Hefner also enjoys the relationships he’s established with his graduate students, which allow them to work well together and “crank out” solid research. Joe hopes that the approaches he has developed have some staying power within the field and that someday, a young, new scholar will approach him at a conference and make it their goal “to spend their entire career trying to prove me wrong.”

    Aside from being a prolific publishing scholar and professor, Joe Hefner is also an avid reader and enjoys playing chess whenever he can, generally while also enjoying a nice small-batch bourbon. He has a new book coming out in August of 2018 entitled Atlas of Human Cranial Macromorphoscopic Traits from Elsevier, Academic Press. His newest publication, “The Macromorphoscopic Databank” should be out soon in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Dr. Hefner is collaborating on a variety of projects with colleagues the world over and working on tenure.

    Click here to read the full newsletter.

    watrall

    ,
    , ,

  • News from Around the Department

    Graduate student and PhD. Candidate Susan Kooiman received the 2016-2017 Moreau Maxwell Scholar Award. This award is given to an Anthropology graduate student for an outstanding research contribution in Anthropology. The award is named in honor of the late Professor Moreau Maxwell, who is internationally recognized for his research contributions in Arctic archaeology. This award was presented in recognition of Ms. Kooiman’s two journal articles published in 2016, and co-authoring two more in the year 2017. Congratulations Susan for your recognition.

    Dr. Gabe Wrobel and his Central Belize Archaeological Survey project (CBAS) have recently published an article in Antiquity on stone panels they found depicting kings playing a ballgame. This article has been highlighted in several other news sources such as Archaeology Magazine, the UK Daily Mail, Live Science and the Archaeology Channel podcast. The CBAS project is a multidisciplinary effort and the article is authored by several people, highlighting this focus on bringing experts together from all over. Check out all the live links to explore this fascinating discovery.

    Graduate student, PhD. Candidate and Graduate Student Association President Caitlin Vogelsberg was awarded one of 20 fellowships by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for their Graduate Research Fellowship in STEM for the 2017-2018 academic year for her project “Increasing Identifications of Deceased Border Crossers: Investigating Spatial and Skeletal Attributes of Migrant Deaths”. This award will support Caitlin during her dissertation project research and writing phases. Ms. Vogelsberg hopes to complete her dissertation this spring.

    watrall

    , , , ,

  • Alumnae Dr. Jane Wankmiller, Director of FROST

    Dr Jane WankmillerWe are very proud to announce that our recent alumna, Dr. Jane Wankmiller, is the new Director of the Forensic Research Outdoor Station (FROST), and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northern Michigan University (NMU). FROST, is currently under construction, and will function as an outdoor forensic anthropology research and training facility located in Marquette, MI, near the NMU campus. Her position is part of a new major in anthropology started Fall Semester 2017. Currently, NMU offers concentrations in either cultural anthropology or archaeology, and Dr. Wankmiller will be bringing a third concentration in physical anthropology to the program. She will develop course work over the next few years to serve as the basis for that concentration and as prerequisites for students who wish to work on projects associated with the forensic anthropology lab or the FROST.

    Dr. Wankmiller’s general research interests stemmed from working for the Michigan State Police (MSP) throughout her graduate career in anthropology here at Michigan State University. During that time, she assisted on several cases and was called on for advice in several others. Her work generated specific research questions about estimation of time since death, search and recovery, and positive identification of decomposed remains, but due to the nature of her position within MSP, opportunities to explore those questions never surfaced. While at NMU, Dr. Wankmiller will consult as a forensic anthropologist on medical examiner cases involving decomposed human remains and remains requiring positive identification and skeletal trauma analysis. She will also be developing a workshop program to provide training for law enforcement, educators, and students in the Upper Peninsula. These various research opportunities will allow her to finally examine some of the questions her work with the MSP provided.

    Originally, Dr. Wankmiller was a biology major with an interest in scientific illustration. It was in art school when she enrolled in her first anthropology class. It changed her life and in her own words, “It showed me how connected we all are to one another and how our past has shaped our present.” This is the moment she realized she wanted a career in anthropology. Given her focus was always more biological, the realization that she could study human remains and still be an anthropologist caused her focus to shift and through the discovery of forensic anthropology, an awareness that her knowledge of human skeletal remains could make an immediate impact on real-time cases was realized. She quickly changed her academic trajectory and never turned back. Dr. Jane Wankmiller graduated in 2010 with an MS in Forensic Science (concentration in anthropology) and in 2016 with a Ph.D. in Anthropology (focus on bioarchaeology) from MSU.

    Jane’s current work with NMU builds on her past work with MSU’s own Dr. Norm Sauer as his assistant for forensic anthropology cases.

    Dr Wankmiller in the field
    Dr. Wankmiller working in the field

    This opportunity allowed her to work with the local medical examiner’s office as a death investigator. Both positions factored into her employment with the MSP. Her position at FROST allows her experiences to coalesce in a meaningful way. Her future research interests lie in the improvement of forensic art techniques, and the contributions they can potentially yield regarding effects of taphonomy on forensic anthropology.

    FROST is only the 8th such facility in the United States, with a similar facility in Massachusetts focusing on studying the taphonomy and postmortem condition of non-human subjects. In that regard, the work at FROST is not new, but it stands to contribute to our understanding of human decomposition and taphonomy as it is the farthest north of all such facilities. The extreme northern nature of FROST will enable Dr. Wankmiller to systematically study the effects of a cold climate on those processes. Through the collaborative research between the NMU facility and the other facilities across the country, Jane is hopeful they can serve the law enforcement and medical examiner communities with high quality forensic anthropology services and training that complement those of MSU Forensic Anthropologists.

    As far as the near future goes, the infrastructure for the forensic anthropology research facility and the accompanying laboratory should be in place by the spring of 2018. Dr. Wankmiller anticipates starting some of their law enforcement training workshops and educational programs by the summer of 2018.

    watrall

    , ,

  • MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab

    (left to right) PhD students Mari Isa, Elena Watson, and Alex Goots in the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab working on the NIJ-funded research project focused on blunt force trauma to adult crania.

    The MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, directed by Dr. Joseph Hefner, provides some of the best forensic anthropology PhD training in the country thanks to the program’s incredible research, teaching, and service opportunities. Under the supervision of Dr. Todd Fenton, Dr. Joseph Hefner, and Dr. Carolyn Isaac, graduate students gain experience conducting public service forensic work and teaching undergraduate courses. The laboratory’s unparalleled research, primarily funded through the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), contributes to forensic sciences, biomechanical sciences and law enforcement worldwide.

    Over the past decade, Dr. Todd Fenton, has received three large grants totaling over $1.7 million dollars from the NIJ. These grants have funded several research projects that are interdisciplinary, cross-college collaborations with co-PIs Dr. Roger Haut, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Feng Wei of the Department of Radiology through the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory. The work has also provided excellent opportunities for our own forensic anthropology PhD students (Mari Isa, Alex Goots, and Elena Watson) who are actively involved in the current project. Over the past decade, several past and present MSU Anthropology graduate students have worked on the preceding interdisciplinary skeletal trauma research endeavors including Caitlin Vogelsberg, Emily Streetman, Carolyn (Hurst) Isaac (PhD 2013), and Nick Passalacqua (PhD 2012). These projects address significant gaps in forensic science by providing experimental data and analytical recommendations for interpreting blunt cranial trauma.

    PhD student and Dr. Todd Fenton work in the MSU forensics lab
    PhD student Mari Isa and Dr. Todd Fenton work in the forensic lab

    The collaboration between the two laboratories grew from a natural intersection between the Forensic Anthropology Lab’s role as a consulting laboratory for law enforcement agencies and medical examiner’s offices across the state of Michigan, and the Orthopaedic Biomechanics Labs’ research on joint trauma. As anthropologists and engineers collaborated to determine the most likely causes of injuries in forensic cases involving complicated skeletal trauma, the need for research specifically addressing this issue became clear.

    Their current project combines data from biomechanical experiments, computer modeling, and fracture pattern analysis to predict and document how variables like the location of an impact, the shape of an implement, or the energy of a blow affect patterns of cranial fracture. The goal of the project is to provide forensic practitioners with better tools to make scientific assessments about the circumstances of an injury based on cranial fracture patterns.

    Dr. Joe Hefner, who joined the department in 2014, has also been awarded NIJ and other funding for his research on craniomorphic forensic standards. With the help of his graduate students, Kelly Kamnikar and Amber Plemons, and recent innovations in our laboratory, standard definitions and illustrations of traits that can be seen by the eye and observed without measurements (macromorphoscopic) have been created. These standards are intended to reduce subjectivity and inter- and intra-observer error within databases used for forensic sciences. Creating this standard database necessitates large scale data collection so our researchers have traveled around the country and as far away as Khon Kaen, Thailand for this project.

    The research being conducted addresses significant gaps in forensic science standards by: (1) correlating ancestry and the appearance of certain cranial traits in large and globally-diverse samples; (2) establishing a database (The Macromorphoscopic Databank, MaMD) of modern, forensically-significant populations; and, (3) developing appropriate statistical methods for the identification of ancestry in an easy-to-use computer program.

    Dr. Carolyn Isaac, an MSU PhD alumni, joined the department and MSUFAL in 2019. She is a recipient of an NIJ grant to develop a database of cranial vault fractures of known age. By documenting the histological environment at specified times with associated gross, radiographic, and histologic information, she established phases of cranial fracture healing. The goal of this project is to generate baseline empirical data on the cells and tissues involved in fracture healing at different stages and to provide forensic practitioners with a method to estimate the age of a healing fracture. Such estimations can aid in determining whether an injury contributed to death,
    whether there are multiple injuries of various ages indicting a pattern of abuse, and may directly contribute to the manner of death classification (homicide, suicide, accident, natural, or indeterminate).

    MSU graduate students work on forensics in Thailand
    Amber Plemons, Dr. Joe Hefner and Kelly Kamnikar collecting cranial data in Thailand

    watrall

    ,

  • MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab Brings Closure to Families

    MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab Brings Closure to Families

    Dr. Joe Hefner of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab, housed within the Department of Anthropology, was recently featured on ABC 12 News, a local Mid-Michigan subsidiary. When human remains are found by the Michigan State Police, they are brought to the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab for identification, as was the case this fall when remains were found in both Saginaw and Flint. Hefner and his team of colleagues and graduate students work tirelessly to create a biological profile of the unidentified individual so that comparisons can be made to existing medical records. These comparisons allow both a positive identification of the body to made and a cause of death determined so that the family can be notified. Their job “is to provide closure for the families first and foremost,” says Hefner.

    To watch the full interview on ABC 12, click here.

    This is not the only job of the lab however. Contained within the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University, their facility is a teaching area where students come from far and wide to learn forensic and human remain identification techniques. Dr. Hefner and his colleagues hold teaching and research positions as well as the work they do for the Michigan State Police and other law enforcement agencies. The graduate students that work in the lab with him also attend the university full time as anthropology graduate students, completing Master’s and PhD.s and hold part time assistantships as teaching assistants for classes across the university in areas like anatomy, biology and anthropology.

    watrall

    , ,