Dental Forensics
VIRTUAL COURSE
Dental Forensics
Monday, Jan. 30th, 2023
Virtual Via Zoom
7-8 pm EST
COST: $40
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Medical & Dental professionals, or anyone with an interest in dental forensics.
COURSE DATE:
Monday, January 30th, 2023
7:00 - 8:00 pm EST
Speaker: Michael M. Gregory, PhD (Arizona State University)
Dr. Gregory has worked in a variety of academic, governmental, non-profit, and commercial settings as an archaeologist during his 40 year career. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, Inc., and is semi-employed directing excavations at Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency recovery sites through Golden West Humanitarian Foundation and American Veterans Archaeological Recovery.
As a field archaeologist, Dr. Gregory has investigated sites in the Upper Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and American Southwest regions as well as participated in projects in France, Jordan, Sicily, and Vietnam. His current research interests focus on Civil War-era Camp Douglas and later urban trends related to suburbanization and the Great Migration in the Chicago area. Dr. Gregory’s lifelong interest in archaeology was sparked while growing-up in Richmond and visiting the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where the Egyptian display captivated his attention.
When not pursuing archaeological interests, Dr. Gregory enjoys Brewer baseball games; traveling with his wife, who is an archaeologist; reading good detective novels or works of non-fiction; looking for Aloha shirts in second hand shops; and camping.
Learning Objectives:
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is tasked with providing “the fullest possible accounting” to the families and the nation about the more than 81,700 Americans who remain missing or “Unknown” from WWII through the Gulf Wars.
For the forensic archaeologists directing the field studies, the work is challenging, exciting, frustrating, and satisfying, as they will encounter conditions--scale, work pace, topographic setting, expectations, and goals--rarely experienced at traditional archaeological sites and certainly never discussed in grad school.
Often the skills of the archaeologist, as well as the rest of a recovery team, is what bridges the gap between historical research, and the recovery and identification of a missing service member. Once a successful recovery is made, the remains are brought back to the DPAA Lab. There identification of individuals becomes the responsibility of forensic anthropologists, who draw upon a number of techniques in order to identify an individual.
In summary, the objectives of this presentation are 1) to introduce DPAA’s mission and its organizational history, 2) to outline, using several case studies, how forensic field work is completed, and 3) to discuss, drawing upon at least one case study—I hope—how identifications are made once remains are received in the DPAA Lab.