Description: The theme of disturbing bodies has a double valence, evoking both the work that anthropologists do and also the ways in which the dead can, in turn, disturb the living through their material qualities, through dreams and other forms of presence, and through the political claims often articulated around them.
Brief description: Zoë Crossland is an associate professor of anthropology at Columbia University and the author of Ancestral Encounters in Highland Madagascar: Material Signs and Traces of the Dead.
Review Quotes: The strength of the volume is its broad anthropological representation. The authors include biological anthropologists, archaeologists, and a social anthropologist. Even how language is used regarding the deceased is addressed in chapter 10. From this diversity comes recognition of the holistic nature of forensic anthropology in human rights investigations and the acknowledgment that its practice varies in international settings.--Ginesse A. Listi, American Antiquity