17 Living on the sidelines of death:

anthropologists and violence

alison galloway

17.1 Introduction

One of the most frequent questions I am asked at public presentations on

forensic anthropology is how do I feel about death, having worked in this field

for three decades. I respond by agreeing that exposure to death, dead bodies,

and the consequences of violence has greatly changed the way in which I look

at death. I value how precious life is and how quickly it can be snatched

from us. I also know how desperately people cling to life as we see the

evidence of people fighting to live and undergoing torture prior to their death.

When I was given the opportunity to provide a contribution for this volume,

I sorted through the usual formats such as a case report or results of a research

project. However, as I began writing, the current topic quickly spilled onto the

page. I would attribute that to a number of factors: my own age and consider-

ations of retirement; seeing my students embark on their own careers in

forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology; and the loss of colleagues, family

members, and friends. However, the most powerful factor is the sight of the

many victims whose bodies we have examined and the opportunity we have to

experience, in our minds, their last moments on earth.

The bioarchaeologist and forensic anthropologist experience death across a

wide range of formats. For those of us working on contemporary material, we

often participate in recovery efforts after mass disasters. During these times,

we may see the bodies or body parts within the context of the death. This series

of images is overlain by the sense of shock and dismay felt more broadly by

the community/nation suffering the loss. It is accompanied by the strain of

long hours and loss of our own support environment.

Bioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on Violence: How Violent Death is Interpreted from

Skeletal Remains, ed. D. L. Martin and C. P. Anderson. Published by Cambridge University Press.

© Cambridge University Press 2014.

311

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

For osteologists who specialize in examination of violence, we also spend

long hours in the laboratory examining individual skeletons, identifying indi-

vidual instances of damage to the bones, determining the means by which that

damage occurred and when it occurred in relation to the individual’s demise,

and finally determining the sequence of events, if possible, from the remains

and our knowledge of anatomy and human movement. The victims have come

to us from situations in which the cause and manner of death may be unclear –

suicide, homicide, accidental, or natural causes. The body is removed from

the context but this act also exposes the vulnerability of the person. The

cleaned bones are laid out on our table to be scrutinized, photographed, and

documented. Stripped of context, all attention is focused on the evidence

of violence.

In this chapter, I want to examine several aspects of how our examination of

death also points inward. How does this change our own attitudes to death and

dying? I will briefly discuss five specific aspects: (1) the isolation of our

professional lives; (2) the lasting memories that this work produces; (3) the

use of humor, specifically gallows or dark humor; (4) how the remains reveal

information about the killer and how that knowledge is incorporated into our

understanding of human nature; and (5) the potential for post-traumatic stress

disorder (PTSD).

17.2 A professional life in isolation

Anthropologists who deal with death and violence often do so on an erratic

schedule. Forensic anthropologists get cases intermittently – often going long

periods without any work and then having multiple cases arriving within a

week. Thrown into this mix are the fortunately less frequent events of mass

disasters/multiple fatality incidents. These large-scale events may require

many hours of work, often on 10–12-hour shifts, for weeks at a time, with

the rest of one’s life set to the side. Bioarchaeologists are more able to

schedule the field season but not when and how bodies will be recovered.

Often remains are uncovered at the close of a season, making recovery

difficult and with little time to mentally process the more obvious evidence

of violence. Only when remains are transported back to the laboratory do we

have a chance to examine cases more closely. This uneven exposure, the need

often to work at a quick pace, and the length of time that we will spend with

the dead are part of the career choice we have made – but one that comes with

other considerations.

One of the difficulties of working with forensic cases, in particular, is the

inability to discuss these cases with the people who are the normal outlets one

312 Anthropologists and violence

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

has for tension. While people may find working on forensic cases an intriguing

topic of conversation, there is less willingness to hear the details – the

maggots, the smell, the decomposed organs within the body cavity. Chills

run up the spine when we say that we “cook the body,” but visualizing a pot in

which nail-polished hands bob up and down is a bit more than people want to

know.

Family members often tire of hearing about cases in all the, often gory,

detail. The choice of subject matter for work was ours, and not necessarily that

of our families. This reticence to speak openly to family members about cases

increases when there are younger children present. I stopped bringing my

young daughter to the laboratory when she began asking if the stab wounds

in the spine of a victim had hurt him. She did not return to the lab for many

years after that, although she is now rather matter-of-fact about dead bodies.

The other factor that limits what we, as forensic anthropologists, can say to

others is the problem of dealing with forensic evidence. Active cases require

careful regulation of the release of information. Press coverage of cases will

publicize certain details but often many intimate details are not included and

may not be known beyond a small circle of investigators until the case goes to

trial. Many cases never go to trial so this information remains concealed. While

the wartime saying of “loose lips sink ships” now better applies to cyberspace,

inappropriate talk can sink a legal case.

We are known to our colleagues, often in anthropology departments, for

being a bit different. My colleagues in campus administration will acknow-

ledge that something is odd about my response to bodies. I have been known to

sit up sharply when a “burn pit” is mentioned in a campus planning activity –

only to slump when it was evident that I could not use it for experimentation on

thermal damage to remains. I also have a large number of non-human skeletal

elements and El Dia de los Muertos artifacts in my office. It has become

standard practice to give me skeleton cards, calendars, trinkets – anything as

long as it has bones. Even my family has succumbed to the tradition and

stopped trying to convert my décor to more acceptable designs of flowers or

geometric patterns.

However, to revel too much in the dead is not appropriate and shows an

indifference of the respect due to all individuals, living or dead. Our livelihood

does, in part, depend on the deaths of others. So, we must temper our almost

gleeful anticipation of a “good case” with the knowledge that, for a case to

come our way, someone died.

So, how do we cope? We find ways to breach the boundaries of the isolation

by reaching out to colleagues beyond our immediate circle. Some are fortunate

to work in coroners’ or medical examiners’ units with colleagues who share

the same experiences. However, many of us work in academia. These

Alison Galloway 313

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

conversations are often not ones to share with our departmental colleagues.

Our students share a part of this life, but until they have come to understand the

world in which they are immersing themselves, we often do not confide fully

in them. Revealing excessive vulnerability can also be problematic for a

mentor to a mentee. Many of us hold things inside until we have the chance

to share with like-minded colleagues.

The public often see professional conferences as a place where the latest

information, processes, and practices are exchanged. Equally important for

those of us who work with the dead is the opportunity to talk with others

whose experience is comparable. Much of the time is spent “out-grossing”

each other – an important release valve for the types of things we experience.

I often spend some of the time with the entomologists since one of my areas of

research has been decomposition. While we happily discuss the various attri-

butes and accomplishments of maggots and other larvae, the neighboring

tables begin to empty.

17.3 Lasting memories

Ask any forensic anthropologist or bioarchaeologist who deals with violence if

they have any lasting memories of their victims and almost all will say yes.

Many of these come from instances of mass disaster. It may be the image of the

large “head-sized” impact marks on the underside of the folding trays after an

airplane crash – especially when you have to fly the same type of plane on the

same route; it may be seeing children getting on a plane, having just worked on

a crash. In my case it was realizing that I was lifting a dead infant recovered

from a plane crash just as I had lifted my own daughter – lifting the legs

slightly and sliding my arm under the body to steady the head. In this case,

there was no head.

Many of us also have specific cases that haunt us. Often it is where the

complex pattern of defects seen on the bones can be matched to a story – either

from an informant or the defendant. In one such case, we were able to identify

blunt force blows to the head, multiple stab wounds in the lower back and

ribcage, and linear cuts on the cervical vertebrae. As we found out after

completing our analysis, the informant told of the victim being hit over the

head, bound, and tortured before having his throat slit.

Then there are the bodies that are not even ours to examine. Since we often

work in morgues, other remains pass before us. With each comes a story of

how and where they died, with whom they were at the time. Many coroner

cases are accidental deaths, often from drug or alcohol abuse, or suicides.

I turned around from a skeletonized case once to see the body of a young man,

314 Anthropologists and violence

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

with carefully sculpted and purple-dyed hair. He had been looking forward to a

weekend of partying just hours before the heroin overdose claimed his life.

I remember the hair.

Bioarchaeologists who work with victims of violence also capture images.

The flesh may be long gone but the ages, the poses, the cut marks or blows are

clearly visible. In these settings the reasoning behind why the people were

killed and why they were placed as they were in death cannot be fully known.

The investigator is left trying to reconstruct the unfathomable.

17.4 Seeing the funny side of death

Gary Larson has a lot of admirers among anthropologists – especially those

who work with human bodies. It was a sad day when he retired in 1995.

Fortunately his cartoons live on. I use them often in teaching, strongly favoring

those that poke fun at death, decay, and scavenging. There are times when

I relate particularly with his depiction of the child who brought in the head in a

pickle jar for classroom “show and tell.”

Humor is often used to break stressful situations but there are many

unspoken rules about the use of such jokes. In general, joking about specific

victims or attributing the cause of their death to their behavior or lifestyle is

less acceptable than jokes that target death itself or the current circumstances,

such as being in a roomful of decomposing bodies.

Gallows humor treats serious, even deadly, subjects as topics for satirical or

light conversation (Watson 2011). Watson points out that gallows humor

among physicians is often misunderstood as callousness and unprofessional

behavior. Instead, she insists that we must recognize the humanity of those

facing the stressful situation. About gallows humor among physicians, she

states: “Moments when health care providers suddenly see the enormous gulf

they’re straddling between medical and lay culture are one source of gallows

humor. Being off-balance can make us laugh, and sometimes laughing is what

keeps us from falling over.”

In a similar vein, Kuhlman (1988) describes humor used in a maximum

security criminal mental health facility. The situations in which such humor

surfaces share common features of unremitting or inescapable stressors and

a sense of “existential incongruity.” As anthropologists working on the

dead, we cannot escape the task at hand without jeopardizing our careers

and reputations. It has to be faced but we end up doing often socially

unacceptable things (defleshing, dismemberment) to the dead while investi-

gating what unspeakable things were done to get them that way in the first

place.

Alison Galloway 315

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

The right to participate in gallows humor also marks the acceptance into a

professional community. Students who overly joke about the bodies are eyed

with suspicion, and senior practitioners either address the behavior or may

decline to continue the association. It is often the mentor’s role to initiate

and set the level of humor for the students.

17.5 People less than human

For killers to be able to kill, they see their victims as less than human. Levin

and Fox (2007) suggest that many sadistic killers do not fit the well-publicized

stereotype of having an extreme personality disorder. Instead they argue that

the killer is able to overcome his/her very normal forces of conscience by

compartmentalizing his/her activities and by dehumanizing the victim.

For the anthropologist dealing with the remains of the victim, we witness the

results of the dehumanization while simultaneously needing to dehumanize the

victim so that we can conduct our studies. In order to perform our work, we

must continue the desecration of the remains to reveal the information they

contain. We strip the bones of their flesh, examine each bone microscopically,

photograph it from every angle, and intrude into all the private areas of the

remains. We, too, compartmentalize these activities away from the rest of our

lives, and we must enter our scientific mode to remove the full humanity from

the deceased individual.

In modern society, the murder of certain categories of people is considered

more reprehensible. These include those individuals who are unable to provide

even some level of defense – children, the severely handicapped, the elderly.

Yet these are often the victims of violent crime, of mass disasters, and of

genocide. In the bioarchaeology context, the discovery of the bodies of

children as victims of either massacre or sacrifice is noted throughout the

world. Again, as the osteologists, we can adopt the approach that these are

scientific data as we complete the examinations and analyze the data. How-

ever, always lurking behind the screen we have mentally established is the

understanding that other humans deliberately murdered people who we would

now consider as innocent and harmless.

17.6 Post-traumatic stress

While post-traumatic stress may occur, most forensic anthropologists do not

claim to suffer the classic symptoms, or, if they do, they do not find them as

distressing. What we see are changes that are more subtle yet equally powerful.

316 Anthropologists and violence

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

These changes usually do not reach the level where symptoms become debili-

tating but they can interact with other aspects of our lives.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder commonly associated with those who have

experienced life-threatening events, such as military combat or physical or

sexual assaults. However, it can also be experienced by those who encounter

death on a repeated basis, such as coroners, death investigators, and forensic

experts. While the etiology is unknown, it is believed that the extreme expos-

ure changes the biochemistry by which the person deals with emotions in the

future. Changes in the transmission of neurotransmitters possibly underlie the

symptoms.

Symptoms fall roughly into three categories. The first is the “reliving” of the

event. Sufferers report flashbacks or dreams in which the events are repeated.

Many of us in the field also experience dreams that have images most would

find unpleasant. Decomposing bodies, skeletons, and evidence of terror may

litter the dreams but not cause particular distress. However, there are times

when circumstances do bring to mind the power of what we have witnessed.

If I were to dream of a rotting corpse, I do not become distressed; however,

if I dreamt of being murdered, or, worse, doing the murder, it is time to

re-evaluate the situation.

The second major group of symptoms involves avoidance. This cluster

includes an overall numbing of emotions and a retraction from circumstances

that would trigger images. Many symptoms in this group are similar to those of

depression. Finally, there is a cluster of symptoms around arousal in which

those who suffer from PTSD have difficulty concentrating and are easily

startled, constantly alert, irritable, and have difficulty sleeping.

Considerable work has been done on first responders, which may include

anthropologists, especially in multifatality incidents. Brondolo and colleagues

(2007) worked with the body handlers from the 9/11 incidents and noted that

many were overwhelmed not only by the volume of remains but by the

duration of the investigation that dragged on for over 4 years. In the immediate

aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster, there was an airline crash with

275 victims, which overlapped with the other analyses. People whose profes-

sional work usually kept them separated from the survivors were thrust into

roles of collecting antemortem data from families. Despite these circum-

stances, Brondolo notes that other studies show that the rates of PTSD are

relatively low amongst World Trade Center workers. The incidence of acute

stress disorder among those responding to air crashes may be as high as 25%

(Fullerton et al. 2004), while officers involved with the World Trade Center

showed rates of PTSD or partial PTSD up to 15% (Marmar et al. 2006).

Much of the psychological damage to workers on mass disasters can be

avoided by preparation (Brondolo et al. 2007). While the events are

Alison Galloway 317

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

unpredictable, training and practice sessions make the response more predict-

able. Mechanisms to provide information on progress and supporting perform-

ance are also beneficial. While mental health professionals would appreciate

greater involvement in the support of body handlers, there is reluctance to seek

these services. Much of this may lie in the perception of the isolated profes-

sional life (see above).

Less information is available about the effects on those who repeatedly

see the results of violence over a long period of time, such as medical

examiners, death investigators, autopsy technicians, and anthropologists.

Probably the best to date is a study of volunteer workers in Israel who

recover bodies and body parts after explosions, often perpetrated by suicide

bombers (Solomon et al. 2007). Surprisingly, these individuals showed

lower rates of PTSD than the general population. Furthermore, those

individuals who employed a “repressive coping strategy,” as defined by

Weinberger et al. (1979), were better protected than others. Such body

handlers report lower anxiety although they often exhibit higher levels of

physiological anxiety (heart rate and blood pressure), a response pattern

more fully explored by Mendolia et al. (1996) and Sparks et al. (1999).

In other words, their anxieties are repressed. Solomon and associates (2007)

noted that these individuals also reported a lower sense of danger in their

work, although their sense of safety was no better than the other, non-

repressive, individuals.

Self-selection may play a role in the relatively low incidence of mental

health issues. As a professor, I have many students who express the intense

desire to become forensic anthropologists – until their first experience with a

decomposing body. Because the anxiety must be “put aside” when working on

remains, those who choose to make it a career may be biased towards those

whose coping strategies are, in general, better matched. As one matures in the

field, the feeling of competence makes situations more controllable even

though every case presents new circumstances.

There comes a time, however, when one gets tired of seeing dead bodies. It

is not the dead themselves that cause the problem, it is the implication of what

humans can do to each other. For each homicide we see as a corpse, there was

someone or a group of people who were capable of putting aside their shared

humanity to kill. It is not the death we seek to avoid seeing but the killing.

I have known people in the field who have gotten so weary of death that they

have given up the sport of hunting, which they previously enjoyed. I am

addicted to a good murder mystery, whether in text or film, but routinely skip

over any reference to the actual act of killing. My ability to repress only works

so far and I make conscious choices to avoid situations that threaten to

overwhelm my abilities to accommodate.

318 Anthropologists and violence

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107051409.022 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Central Florida, on 23 Oct 2021 at 19:43:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

17.7 Conclusions

People ask me what it takes to be a good forensic anthropologist and I usually

respond that it requires a weak nose and a strong stomach. In a sense, these are

helpful traits but they also symbolize the broader qualities that it takes to work

in this field. We have the responsibility to bear the burden of these deaths

while also trying to protect ourselves so that the scent of death does not

overwhelm us. We must remove ourselves emotionally from the immediate

scene. I refer to this as going into “science mode” in which the analysis of the

body takes priority over comprehending how the person died. The reality of

the violence, however, does catch up to us. The sense of loss for a life cut

short, the knowledge of the terror they experienced knowing that they would

soon die, and the privilege of telling the story the victims can no longer speak

require the anthropologist to be able and willing to bear the burden that comes

with this knowledge.

What keeps those of us in the field is our sense of discovery, resolution, and

contribution. When we examine a body, we are party to information about how

that person spent their last moments. We become the mouthpiece through

which that story can be told long after the decedent passed away. The ability to

balance the emotion of knowing this very private information with the scien-

tific investigation is key for a successful and lengthy career in the field.

A good colleague, a fellow forensic anthropologist, died recently. He left his

body to the University of Tennessee decay facility and the skeletal remains,

once cleaned, to the Smithsonian Institution. While we study death frequently,

we know we will, at some time in the future, also be the remains subject to

someone else’s handling.

References

Brondolo, E., Wellington, R., Brady, N., Libby, D. & Brondolo, T. J. (2007). Mechan-

ism and strategies for preventing post-traumatic stress disorder in forensic workers

responding to mass fatality incidents. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 15,

78–88.

Fullerton, C. S., Ursano, R. J. & Wang, L. (2004). Acute stress disorder, posttraumatic

stress disorder, and depression in disaster or rescue workers. American Journal of

Psychiatry, 161, 1370–6.

Kuhlman, T. L. (1988). Gallows humor for a scaffold setting: managing aggressive

patients on a maximum-security forensic uni. Hospital and Community Psychiatry,

39, 1085–90.

Levin, J. & Fox, J. A. (2007). Normalcy in behavioral characteristics of the sadistic

serial killer. In: Kocsis, R. N. (ed.) Serial Murder and the Psychology of Violent

Crimes. Totowa: Humana Press Inc., 3–14.

Alison Galloway 319