INTERPRETATION OF TRAUMA AND TAPHONOMY IN A MODERN KNOWN SKELETAL POPULATION: IMPLICATION FOR FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY

In Forensic Anthropology, trauma analysis is essential for a correct understanding of the cause and the modality of death as well as for the interpretation of previous traumatic events which occurred in life. Both have important implications in criminal and humanitarian scenarios: to demonstrate whether a crime was committed, and to ascertain torture and maltreatment. Nevertheless, the assessment of a traumatic event, whether antemortem, perimortem or potmortem, is extremely challenging and often limited and altered by multiple variables, namely taphonomy. Few are the validated scientific methods which can help anthropologists in the interpretation of skeletal trauma, and which are often limited by the lack of known skeletal material on which to conduct research in order to acquire data, to validate methods and to study and create theoretical trauma and taphonomy models. Among the many known documented skeletal collections already presented officially to the international scientific community very few are equipped also with known/control data on trauma, and cause and modality of death. The Milan cemeterial Skeletal Collection, which is only part of the more consistent Milan Osteological Skeletal Collection housed at LABANOF (University of Milan) is one of the latter, and its presence has offered the chance to conduct research on the difficult field of trauma and taphonomy included in the Ph.D project. The first ever anthropological study of the skeletal sample of the Milan skeletal collection here presented, has been the starting point which permitted us to highlight the numerous diagnostic difficulties concerning trauma analysis and has provided the material on which to conduct the applied research for analysing the state of the art currently used by the discipline. As a consequence of the many limits arising from the first two research lines (on the diagnosis of antemortem lesions as well as the identification of perimortem injury), which appeared not satisfactory enough for a correct interpretation of skeletal lesions, the research has focused on the novel field of blood taphonomy in order to provide knowledge for the use of cell components and biomarkers as indicators of vitality and survival on skeletal trauma which represents more reliable future possible alternative solutions.