Profile: Crime scene investigation

Forensic anthropology? Hearing those words, many people conjure up images of gloves and glamour--a cross between the Crime Scene Investigation television series and Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta. However for Sue Black, professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology at the University of Dundee, the realities of the job are a lot less attractive. Whether she is on a mission in Iraq or Kosovo or helping the police to identify remains found anywhere from Scotland to Italy, glamour does not get a look in.

When the Serbs retreated from Kosovo in 1999, the United Nations urgently sought forensic teams that could analyse sites of possible war crimes before the returning refugees destroyed evidence. The British forensic team, of which Black was a member, arrived three days after the retreat had taken place and immediately set to work.

“The first crime scene that we had was an outhouse. Forty men had been herded through the door, gunmen had sprayed the room with Kalashnikov fire and their accomplices had stood at the windows, thrown in straw, thrown in combustants, and torched the place. A watertight indictment site ideally requires a survivor who can actually bear witness to what happened, and there was a survivor from that, which to me is just amazing. He had been …