Forensic Anthropology as Practiced in the United States: Qualifications, Standards, and Ethical Practice

Abstract

This paper serves as the introduction to the special issue with the same title. This special issue grew from a symposium held at the annual scientific meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists in 2023 in Reno, Nevada. The conference aimed to highlight the various issues of qualifications, standards, and ethics as relevant to the praxis of forensic anthropology. The resulting papers focus on these three main themes, exploring the main topics of discussion within the discipline. We broadly summarize the papers of the special issue and discuss their relevance to these three main themes. We conclude with our thoughts on ethics, standards, and qualifications, namely that we envision a field in which qualifications can be demonstrated through certification and eventually licensure. Additionally, we see standard development as being critically important to the professionalization of the field and encourage participation in this development via the review process. Finally, we advocate for an ethical discipline that not only considers data and skeletal analysis but also how we interact with each other as colleagues to create a discipline that is supportive of diversity and fosters creative thought.