| 2007 PAST Foundation Forensic
Archaeology Workshop
Forensic science has crossed from the scientific field into public
vernacular due to highly popular television shows. GAs a result, large
numbers of students are excited about the forensics. PAST sees this
trend as a tremendous teaching tool for science and subsequently created a
workshop for high school teachers based on the successful
2006 Forensics
in the Classroom pilot program.
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On
Saturday, April 21, Drs. Annalies Corbin, PAST Foundation, and Carol
Park, Columbus School
for Girls, along with PAST staff Dr. Sheli Smith, along with interns Jules Angel and Devin Chambers, and
graduate students from the Ohio State University ,held a day-long
forensics workshop for high school teachers. Also
helping were twelve students from the Columbus School for
Girls who participated in a
forensics
field school program in 2006. The girls lectured and presented a
video of highlights of the forensics pilot program. Hedy Justus, an OSU graduate student
in anthropology, shared her experience working at mass graves in Iraq.
Afterwards, groups composed of two and three teachers each brainstormed
ideas to incorporate forensics into classroom disciplines. A few of the
workshop's preliminary ideas include:
Forensics: Visual & Performing Arts
There has been a murder at the high school. Use of
science and math to solve the murder. Facial reconstruction and mapping
through using clay.
Forensics: Science
Distinguishing observation and inference, through a box
of items, for example.
Working with skeletons to determine sex, estimation of age, stature and
ancestry.
Observing development of insects for time of death factor.
Forensics: History-Social Science
Self-analysis: what does your on stuff say
about you culturally?
Forensic cultural anthropology: analyze clothing and personal items to
determine if they belong to man, woman, child, baby, and what culture
they represent.
Forensics: Language Arts
Write a “day in the life” story of forensic
subjects using extrapolated scientific clues.
Forensics: Math
Measurement through diameter/radius in blood
splatters, golden ratio and scaled drawings. Time of death and
temperature determination. Calculation of trajectory and velocity of
bullet.
Craig Brandt, a
teacher at Columbus City Schools, suggested the use of current events
with forensics to study History, English, and Science. He used an
example of mass graves in Iraq.
History:
Study the history of Iraq through Saddam Hussein and differences between
cultural/religious/ political groups.
English:
Explore concepts such as despotism,
tyranny and share opinions on the trial and execution of Hussein.
Science:
Place several plastic skeletons in a mass grave with identifying
cultural times and distinguish trauma markings. Students would need to
be able to identify sex/cultural group/ religious group of victims as
well as the manner in which they were murdered.
Some of these preliminary ideas
will be fully developed into classroom exercises. Program data from the
2006 pilot program, this workshop and two 2007 Forensics in the
Classroom summer sessions will be compiled to create a useable forensics
program for high school students across the U.S.
Afterwards, Dr.
Carol Park from
Columbus School for Girls demonstrated DNA analysis by using horse
DNA. Each participant was able to see the strand separate from the white
blood cells.
Feedback from
the teachers was positive. The horse DNA lab was a favorite of the
participants. The teachers also decided the ideas generated from the
brainstorming activity will be integrated into their curricula. All
agreed that with forensic science being so popular today, applying it to
different disciplines is a successful way to encourage students’
enthusiasm.
Workshop Staff
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Dr. Annalies Corbin serves as
Executive Director of the PAST Foundation and oversees the
organization's daily operations. Dr. Corbin is a nautical
archaeologist specializing in inland river transportation and
immigration. She is the author of The Material Culture of
Steamboat Passengers: Archaeological Evidence from the Missouri
River (2000) and the recently-published
The Life
And Times of the Steamboat Red Cloud: How Merchants, Mounties,
And the Missouri Transformed the West (2005), several
chapters in edited works, and articles in Historical
Archaeology, IJNA, Discovering Archaeology, and Underwater
Archaeology. She is the recipient of numerous state, federal and
private grants. |
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Dr. Carol Park is a science teacher
at CSG and has a PhD in immuno-genetics from the Ohio State
University. She has 18 years of experience teaching molecular
biology, immunology, genetics, and biochemistry at both the
college and high school levels. She is currently in her fifth
year teaching Upper School Science at CSG where she teaches
introductory chemistry and physics, biology, and an advanced
seminar in biotechnology. Dr. Park is coordinator of CSG’s May
Program and worked with the PAST foundation to bring this field
school to CSG to be part of the 2006 May Program. Dr. Park has
extensive research and teaching experience in all aspects of DNA
fingerprinting and forensic biotechnology. The students in the
second week of this forensics field school will learn to test
for DNA, to isolate DNA from various sources, to use restriction
enzymes to create DNA RFLP ‘fingerprints,’ and to prepare
agarose and PAGE gels for gel electrophoresis. Additionally,
they will investigate court cases involving DNA fingerprinting,
and finally will analyze a crime scene for DNA evidence.
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Dr. Sheli O. Smith joins the PAST
Foundation with a strong background in museum work and
archaeological interpretation for both K-12 and public
audiences. Her particular research interests include lifeways at
sea and the ways those are reflected in the layout of ships, and
trade networks in the Pacific in the 18th and 19th centuries.
For the past 20 years, Dr. Smith has focused primarily Gold
Rush-era shipwreck sites, located in California, the South
Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Among the projects she has worked
on in her career are the1779 American privateer brig Defense
(located in Maine), the c. 1710 Ronson Ship (New York), the 1864
American clipper ship Snow Squall (Falkland Islands), the
1859 American barque La Grange (Sacramento), the 1855
American barque Julia Ann (Tahiti), and the Emerald Bay,
California State Underwater Park. |
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Jules R. Angel
is an
award-winning photographer, archaeologist and a former forensic
photographer for Scotland Yard in London, England. In her ten
years of forensic work she became an expert in lighting
techniques for fingerprint and shoe print photography as well as
mastering the visual narrative for scenes of crime photography.
Her normal duties included many major murder cases as well as
anti-terrorist work. Jules is also a founding member of the
Forensic Anthropology Cold Case Team (FACCT) based in Columbus,
Ohio. She is currently a PhD candidate at OSU in archeology with
concentration in pre-historic Ohio earthworks.
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Devin Chambers recently graduated
from Linworth High School in Columbus. Devin came to PAST
through a sixteen-week Walkabout Program exploring possible
careers. She spent her first eight weeks in the Washington,
D.C. area, working at
Mount Vernon under Dr. Dennis Pogh. During her time at
PAST, Devin has been instrumental in organizing the foundation's
2007 field schools and summer camps. |
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The 2007 PAST Foundation Forensic
Archaeology Workshop was sponsored by:
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