Happy New Year from all of us at the Michigan State University Forensic Anthropology Lab. While we look toward 2021 with hope that it will be brighter, we are taking a moment to reflect on our successes and progress during the Fall 2020 semester. As a lab, we recognize our work from every semester to honor each other’s contributions to our community and discipline, and to celebrate personal accomplishments. This reflection is particularly valued during these distressing times, as the situation in which we are all living has brought profound challenges, grief, and interrupted personal goals. Throughout the hardships, we have certainly remained grateful for each other and for the opportunities that we do have.
Last fall we started holding online weekly lab meetings to stay connected. In addition to checking in with each other, we discuss articles and topics in the field and take turns presenting forensic cases. The MSUFAL maintained its services throughout the fall and conducted forensic casework with modified protocols. These health and safety precautions include having only one person in the lab space at a time and allowing only our three forensic anthropology faculty to respond to medical examiner offices for casework. Throughout last semester, our three forensic anthropologists have kept everyone’s wellbeing at the forefront.
Lab Director Dr. Carolyn Isaac has done remarkable work guiding the lab’s operations and adapting opportunities for graduate students to stay involved in casework. In addition to these efforts, Dr. Isaac has kept busy writing publications for her NIJ funded research on the histological progression and stages of cranial fracture healing. During the fall semester, Dr. Joe Hefner taught Human Osteology and safely led its hands-on lab component for students through social distancing measures. Dr. Hefner was also featured by the Museum of London alongside Dr. Rebecca Redfern, Human Osteology Curator, for their collaborative research on exploring ancestry and racism in Medieval London. As Chair of the Department of Anthropology, Dr. Todd Fenton has continued to work tirelessly on our behalf. Under “normal” circumstances he stays very busy, but the pandemic has constantly introduced new complications to manage.
Micayla Spiros, third year PhD student, served her first semester as the MSUFAL student Lab Manager. In this role, she has been actively engaged in 18 cases involving positive identification, biological profile, and trauma analysis, including two cold case exhumations. Micayla also started her first semester as a Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative Fellow, focusing on making scholarship as accessible as possible in biological anthropology while developing a digital teaching tool for osteologists. Another “first semester” position Micayla began in the fall was President of the Graduate Students in Anthropology (GSA). In addition to these activities, Micayla has continued collaborative research on eye tracking in forensic anthropology and is preparing for her dissertation research on the ontogeny and distribution of postcranial macromorphoscopic variation.
After passing her comprehensive exams this past semester, Amber Plemons officially became a PhD candidate! Amber took a short course this fall with Dr. Hugo Reyes-Centeno (University of Kentucky) on population genetics which will inform her dissertation research. In this course, she learned the foundations and theoretical underpinnings of population genetics, as well as practiced running R statistical code comparing population distances between macromorphoscopic traits and microsatellite data. Amber has also been working with Leah Böttger, a student at University of Tuebingen, Germany, to examine the possibilities of scoring cranial macromorphoscopic traits from CT and 3D images. This method will open opportunities to continue data collection during the pandemic by using digital sources.
Second year PhD student Rhian Dunn kept busy this fall with her coursework in Human Gross Anatomy and Human Osteology with Dr. Hefner. Rhian also began her second year as a MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) Fellow. She was instrumental in developing this year’s CAP Apparitions and Archaeology: A Haunted Campus Tour, which was presented as a choose-your-own path digital tour. Rhian and Amber, a third year CAP Fellow, were on the live panel Q&A session to discuss the sites featured in the tour. This fall, Rhian served her first semester as the GSA Information Officer and as the Anthropology representative for the MSU Council of Graduate Students (COGS). Serving on a couple of COGS committees, Rhian has been an active voice for MSU’s graduate and professional students.
Alex Goots is on the verge of being ABD as she prepares to defend her dissertation proposal this semester. Alex submitted a chapter in the fall, entitled “The Biology of Ethnicity: Assessing the Potentials of Biological Anthropology through a Case Study from Roselle (Tuscany, Italy),” for the inclusion in an edited volume for the Institute of European and Mediterranean Archaeology. This chapter highlights biological anthropology’s contributions to questions of ethnicity, including stable isotope, ancient DNA, and craniometric analyses, with a focus on how these methods are applied at the early Medieval cemetery at Roselle. Alex has also been working with Dr. Isaac and members of the MSUFAL to use genetic genealogy in an attempt to identify one of our lab’s cold cases.
Doctoral candidate Kelly Kamnikar and Dr. Hefner received a collaborative grant this fall from the Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center (HHRC) to support the project “Anthropological Analysis of Victims of the Soviet-Era Terror in Georgia.” Dr. Meri Gonashvili of the Tbilisi State Medical University, Georgia is the PI for this project and Dr. Nick Herrmann of Texas State University is a Co-PI with Kelly and Dr. Hefner. The Co-PIs will travel to Tbilisi, Georgia to work under the direction of Dr. Gonashvili to excavate and analyze skeletal remains from the Soviet-Era Terror (1937–1938). Kelly also gave a presentation on her work with the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Forenses de Guatemala (INACIF) during an online event in the fall organized by the INACIF.
Elena Watson, fourth year PhD student, focused on dissertation preparation this fall semester working towards her comprehensive exams and proposal defense. Her dissertation research will investigate the possible presence of malaria in Medieval Nubia and explore the expression of several skeletal lesions of interest while incorporating microCT analyses. Elena also continued her role as the Department of Anthropology Research Assistant. In this position, she has been helping with the Department’s communications and is responsible for generating and sending the Department’s biannual newsletter. Elena began serving her second year as Treasurer for the GSA last semester alongside fellow officers Micayla and Rhian.
As we begin the Spring 2021 semester, with both new and now familiar anxieties, we are appreciative of the positive news we can share. Stay tuned for future MSUFAL blogs covering our move to our new lab space, presentations at the upcoming American Academy of Forensic Sciences online conference, and more lab member and alumni spotlights.
Authored by: Elena Watson