So here's the thing.. I find bones fascinating. There is so much information you can learn about a person, just by studying their skeleton, which as it turns out, is pretty helpful in police investigations and whatnot. I spent a lot of time in the osteology lab looking at the study skeletons during my undergrad, and I could almost tell what their faces looked like when they were alive based on the morphology of their facial bones (in fact, you can so that with facial reconstruction techniques). Apparently, a lot of people find this kind of thing disturbing. Whenever I tell people what it is I'd like to do (excavate mass graves/identify victims of war crimes as a forensic anthropologist) they always ask me something like 'don't you find that a little morbid?'. Which is a silly question but I suppose I can understand why people would ask it. A forensic anthropologist does have a lot of contact with human remains, bones and soft tissue - I can only imagine the smell - which is probably pretty unpleasant (not to mention how traumatizing the evidence of violence on the bones can be). People in this profession, however, are not focused on the gore, but rather on helping people understand what happened to their loved ones, which provides much-needed closure.

I imagine that people who deal with dead bodies have to keep a mental distance from the grusomeness of their work (in order to maintain their emotional health), but not so much as to lose sight of the reason why they're doing it. Of all the subdisciplines of anthropology, I find forensic anthropology the most altruistic, which is why I'm attracted to it. Much of the world has suffered an unhealthy dose of horror and violence, and those who committed (or are responsible) for such acts need to be punished. It always amazes me how some people can have such a lack of empathy - how they can kill so many without flinching.

Makes you angry to think about that, doesn't it? That's why people don't think twice about handling corpses. That's why forensic anthropologists don't mind the macabre nature of their work.

If you're interested in reading about forensic anthropology, war crimes and the violation of human rights, check out a book called 'The Bone Woman' by Clea Koff, or this, and this, and this.