Archaeology and Forensic Science: The Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach in Pakistan

Abstract

Forensic Science and archaeology have a very close relationship. Forensic Archaeology is the application of archaeological research and techniques in Forensic Science to solve the medicolegal issues. Unlike Pakistan, archaeology is considered as an integral part of Forensic Science in the developed countries. Therefore, this is very necessary for Pakistani archaeologists to make a collaboration of Forensic Science with archaeology within Pakistan by collaborating with the forensic science agencies/departments for the bright future of archaeology. In this paper the researchers have focused on the relation of archaeology and forensic science, the multidisciplinary methodology of Forensic Archaeology and the present status and future directions of such multidisciplinary approach in Pakistan. Forensic Science is used to predict not the future but the past (Lee 1998: 280). In modern definition forensic science is the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems (Fisher et al. 2009: 3). In other words, Forensic Science is the scientific method of gathering and examining information about the past. The word forensic comes from the Latin forensis, meaning “of or before the forum.” Forensic science applies scientific principles, techniques, and methods to the investigation of crime. Other related definitions of forensic may include the use of science to aid in the resolution of legal matters and a scientific analysis for the purpose of judicial resolve. Recently the term forensic is used to describe many scientific investigations and some these investigations are of historical importance. For example, a forensic scientist may work on the discovery of the composition of ancient pottery or the identification of ancient human remains (Collins 2007: 1-3). In the past, the primary tools in Forensic Science were observation and interpretation of physical evidence. In the second half of the nineteenth century for the first time science was applied to the forensic investigation (Erckert 1997: 1). Forensic Science is a multidisciplinary science closely related to other sciences like biology, chemistry, anthropology and archaeology etc. It is interesting to compare forensic science and archaeology because of the close relationship (Drewett 1999: 2). In the case of archaeology, scientific archaeology (also known as processual archaeology) is a theoretical movement rooted in the 1960s–1970s. Scientific archaeology represented a radical break from the then-dominant culture, the historical and antiquarian approaches to archaeology and resulted into Archaeology as a science (oxfordbibliographies.com). With the application of science archaeology has made a place in the sciences. Archaeology also predicts the past, like Forensic Archaeology. Most archaeologists define archaeology as the study of the past through material remains. Archaeology has its own methodology and theory applicable to the remains of past peoples, societies and cultures (Drewett 1999: 2). Like Forensic Science, Archaeology is also a multidisciplinary science and has a close relationship with other sciences e.g biology, chemistry and forensic science.