“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” (E.O. Wilson)

Critical thinking applies not only to forensic science but also to the design of facilities where forensic science transpires. In this article, we explore how anthropology has evolved along with facility design over the years from academia to popular culture and from a single case to mass graves. How has anthropology in forensic science changed and how has facility design responded?

Thirty years ago when law enforcement professionals or criminal prosecutors needed assistance with cases involving human skeletal remains, they found themselves traveling to the halls of academia or museums. Answers to basic questions pertaining to the identity of a skeletonized individual and what happened to them was needed before any meaningful criminal investigation could begin. At that time, these institutions were the only places you could find individuals possessing expertise with the recovery and analysis of human skeletal remains. However, forensic cases represented an interruption to their already demanding schedules, which consisted of teaching, research, and maintaining collections.

One can almost see a dimly lit dean’s office at an Ivy League university with dark wood and leather wrapped furniture. The office had a musty smell of 100-year-old books stacked from floor to ceiling and a skeleton’s skull sitting on the corner of the desk. Walking into the dean’s lab, it looked like an old tuberculosis ward with ceramic tile floor, glazed wall tiles in white, and high ceilings with very large double hung windows. The perimeter of the lab was lined with dark wood casework and black soapstone tops. On the bench top, one could find natural gas, vacuum compressed air with a deep black sink, and hot and cold water. A porcelain table was located in the center of the room, ripped right out of the hospital operating room with a surgical light mounted overhead. This was the original haven of the academic anthropologist.

The volume of cases brought to some academic anthropologists eventually led to the establishment of laboratories and personnel dedicated solely to forensic anthropology casework and research. Today, anthropologists can still be found in university and museum settings, but an increasing number of forensic anthropologists work full-time in medical examiners’ offices and both federally and state funded forensic laboratories. As is the case with most forensic sciences, the core discipline of anthropology did not originate solely to provide answers to questions related to modern death investigations. To truly understand what a forensic anthropologist does, it becomes necessary to examine the larger field of anthropology. In doing so, one arguably emerges with a sense of how difficult it can be to attempt “scientific” study of complex problems concerning human interactions and the reconstruction of human events. Furthermore, one may develop a better understanding of the theories and methods employed by forensic anthropologists and what other forensic practitioners can draw from that.