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Upcoming Lecture – “Mass Graves in Iraq: a Brief Overview with Case Studies”

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology

 

Mass Graves in Iraq: a Brief Overview with Case Studies

David Hines, Ph.D. candidate

Monday, February 23, 2015, FAB 105, 3-4 pm

ABSTRACT:

Decades of wars, repressions, and uprisings have left Iraq with a mass graves problem of considerable scope and diversity.  The graves are found throughout the country; they are small and large, in urban and in rural settings, isolated and in large complexes, clandestine and intentionally public.  The human remains in the graves are diverse, as well: they include soldiers and civilians, men and women, adults and children, and all religious and ethnic groups.

This lecture addresses the history, typology, and recovery of Iraq’s mass graves, as well as general mass graves methodology.  The process is illustrated with real examples and problems from mass graves work in Iraq, both in the field and mortuary, from finding grave sites, excavating them, and recovering the human remains and other evidence, to analyzing the evidence and identifying patterns within the data collected.

Advisory: this lecture includes photographs of skeletonized human remains, including juveniles, and photographs of skeletal trauma.

 

David Hines is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida who has worked extensively on mass graves and related issues in Iraq.  He served as an osteoarchaeologist for the  (RCLO/MGIT) from 2005 to 2007, and is currently on a leave of absence from the International Commission on Missing Persons, where he has worked as forensic anthropology trainer for the Baghdad, Iraq and Erbil, Iraq offices from 2010 to summer 2014 and since then as a senior forensic anthropologist for the Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, office.  In the United States, he has worked as a graduate assistant at the University of Florida’s C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, as a medicolegal death investigator for the Medical Examiner’s Office in Jacksonville, Florida, and as owner-operator of a physical anthropology consulting company.  He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.