PAST CRIMESago, and to try to determine whether a death found during excavation of an
archaeological site was the result of unlawful killing, execution, accident,
ritual or warfare.
The forensic sciences have a very long history, if not always firmly
scientifically applied. In the medieval period, Chinese doctors learned how to
distinguish causes of death, and fingerprints were used to validate documents,
although they were not systematically recorded. One of the earliest stories
about the use of a forensic approach to investigation suggests that, during the
third century BC, Archimedes was asked to make sure that a golden votive
wreath destined for a temple was actually pure gold, or whether a fraud had
been committed. He could not damage the crown in any way. He realised that
a wreath made of pure gold would be less buoyant than one to which a lighter
metal had been added. He was able to prove that the wreath was fraudulent.
Physical evidence began to be used to identify criminals in the later
eighteenth century, and analysis of the ink in a document is first recorded in
Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, around the time when
microscopes began to be used to identify bloodstains. Within a few decades,
tests were establishing whether poison had been used, and providing ballistic
evidence. The invention of photography added new dimensions to criminal
investigations, both to identify convicted criminals and to record details of
crime sites. Following earlier theorists, Sir Francis Galton published a book on
fingerprints and their ability to help solve crimes in 1892. In the twentieth
century forensic science began to be formally taught, the first university to
offer courses being Lausanne, in Switzerland.
Medical, technical and photographic advances rapidly added to the tools
available over the next hundred years, and new types of evidence were
introduced–forensic botany which is used to identify plants, pollen and other
vegetable material at a crime scene or on a suspect, forensic entomology to
study insect behaviour at crime scenes, isotopic analyses and DNA studies for
identification of victims and criminals. The very first police crime laboratory
was set up in Lyons in 1910. Since then, the use of computers and the world
wide web have enabled investigators to collate, compare and share
information internationally.
Many police investigations require the application of normal archaeological
skills, such as stratigraphic recording, sampling of soils and microfossils, and
meticulous removal of even the tiniest scrap of materials and artefacts from
the ground. The techniques used to study the minute details of the past have
proved to be very useful in providing evidence for court prosecutions in the
present.