Validation Project in Forensic Anthropology - PROVAF
In Brazil, Forensic Anthropology as a discipline has only recently come back into vogue. Its roots and original interdisciplinary relationships are found in other medico-legal and forensic sciences, such as forensic odontology. Thus, research of this nature is conducted, in most cases, by institutions linked to the interests of public security niches. Its applicability plays a fundamental role in the process of identifying skeletal remains at the service of society in legal terms in the resolution of forensic cases, and in humanitarian terms in the pursuit of equality of Human Rights.
Forensic anthropology applies methods in order to diagnose sex, age, stature and ancestry for the identification of human remains, in an advanced state of decomposition or even skeletonized and charred. These methods are generally developed from identified osteological reference collections, constituting essential tools for scientific and forensic investigation work, and in training.
The protocols and techniques applicable to research and laboratory analysis in Forensic Anthropology are non-consensual, diverse and questionable methodological instruments in the Brazilian and even international academic framework. Such points of debate arise, above all, from the absence of universal parameters that can be used in a generalized way in study material as diverse and with specificities as the human skeleton. In addition, the technological advances developed in the last decades for the analysis of skeletal material provide technical resources still under debate and research, which collaborate for the establishment and improvement of conceptual definitions and of very recent scientific methodological standards.
In this sense, there have been countless contributions from Forensic Anthropology developed in countries in South America, such as Peru and Argentina, Europe, such as Portugal and England, and the United States, for example, in the interdisciplinary framework of research on bone remains in Brazil. Such countries present themselves as models regarding the establishment of protocols and procedures for systematic international analyzes and have cutting-edge research regarding the process of identifying human osteological remains in forensic contexts and their applicability in the area of Human Rights.
It is, for this reason, that the reference skeletal collections are essential and assist in a crucial and effective way in the training and education of professionals specialized in the work in Forensic Anthropology for legal and juridical contexts, that is, in the scope of Human Rights, for example, by understanding and combating social and ethnic-racial inequalities.
The Institute of Teaching and Research in Forensic Sciences - IEPCF has a set of cemeteries with great potential to serve as a reference collection of interest for bioanthropological studies. To this end, IEPCF and the Laboratory of Archaeological Studies (LEA / UNIFESP) signed an agreement to carry out research and teaching based on the curatorial process, both in the collection and organization of documentary data (ante-mortem phase) and in the preparation and skeletal analysis (post mortem phase). The project will create an anthropological database, to make this collection in fact, a reference collection, from which it is possible, with all scientific rigor, to apply and adapt to the Brazilian and regional context, internationally recommended anthropological methods, and to train and train students, researchers and researchers, at work in Forensic Anthropology.
The project coordinated by Cláudia Plens (responsible and coordinator of LEA / UNIFESP), Camila Diogo de Souza (Universidade Federal Fluminense) and Thais Torralbo Lopes Capp (Universidade de São Paulo), and earned the financial support of the Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (HHRRC / AAFS).