Identifying the dead in Haiti -- an anthropologist's story
As if the devastation of Haiti's earthquake wasn't enough. Now comes the painstaking, morbid work of identifying the dead.
While the Haitian government struggles with this task, the U.S. has deployed a team of professionals from forensic dentists to fingerprint specialists to identify the at least 100 Americans who perished in the rubble.
Identifying the dead is a matter of dignity and respect and offers their families and sense of closure, said Towson University professor and forensic anthropologist Dana Kollmann, who I featured in this story today.
The American teams, called DMORTs -- Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams -- operate out of a portable morgue at the Port-au-Prince airport. Kollmann's task will be studying the bones excavated from the ruins.
The entire work done by the team is fascinating, albeit gruesome. But I was really impressed by Kollmann's deep knowledge of all things anthropological.The deployment is the culmination of her two decades of expertise from a crime scenes investigator in Baltimore County, a grave excavator in the former Yugoslavia and a Smithsonian researcher who studies prehistoric bones on the weekends.
All the while, she and her archeologist husband juggle raising four kids under 6(!) who explain "Mama studies bones."
When I met with her earlier this week at her Catonsville home, the kids were running around, two dogs were barking up as storm. And yet, Kollmann was unfazed, and calmly explained why anthropology and forensics have been her passion ever since she was a little girl digging in her parents backyard. She's motivated by an insatiable curiosity and a need to answer questions that link the past to the present. Cool stuff.
Baltimore Sun photo
