Saturday, April 18, 2015

A Day In The Life Of A Forensic Architect

By Stella Gay


This field has been in existence in Europe since the 1960s, but has been recently here in America that we have a team of professionals available to analyze and recreate events at a site of historical significance. Many sites of interest have been unearthed during construction, and some of them have been important enough to cease work. It is a forensic architect who comes in to tell the story of the events at such a dig.

These scientists must be trained in several forms of architecture as well as general police-style evidence gathering and evaluation. There has been violence committed on basically every corner of the Earth, and these professionals try to tell the stories. For this reason, museums who continue to collect new artifacts will often have such a team employed there.

It is said that history is written by the victors, and there is a great deal of truth to this perception. However, these professionals take pride in the fact that part of their job is to analyze the available data and provide an unbiased story of an event. This requires the ability to analyze without insinuating personal opinion, even if the events uncovered go against personal belief, or even a current historical narrative.

They often use old newspapers or magazines, written eye-witness accounts, and sometimes aerial footage. The circles of glass in India are an excellent example of the aerial footage, as we were unable to explain them until we had nuclear capability ourselves. Many cite those glass circles as proof that an alien race engaged in some sort of battle on our planet, and it just so happens that the Hindu Veda tells exactly that sort of story.

When a body is found law enforcement is generally called, but these officers frequently request the assistance of a team of architectural historians. If the body cannot be compared successfully against someone on the missing person roster, then it is always possible that the body is much older than anticipated. Some murders of the old world have even been solved, thus closing a door on an unexplained murder hundreds of years ago.

In fact, these professionals are frequently called to task when an ancient site is uncovered that appears to have been a place of worship and human sacrifice. The site of the bog people is an excellent example. The forensics experts came in and discovered that there were most certainly elements of sacrificial rite apparent in the way the bodies were lain, but some of the methods of sacrifice were quite violent, and some of them may have been murdered but buried there to conceal the crime.

There is always at least one person on such a team who is an artist most talented with the gift of sculpture. This artist has a vast education in the structure of the human face, including the relative space between bone and flesh. Our bodies have a particular equation, and such an artist can recreate the face of a person who lived thousands of years ago.

When a professional establishes the correct chain of events, it denotes a success for mankind. Not only do they release their findings press-release style to the general public, but it becomes the narrative taught in schools and universities all over the world. This is a great responsibility for one to become a steward of history.




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