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Historical Routes and Current Practice for Personal Identification

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P5 Medicine and Justice

Abstract

This article is about identification of cadavers and human remains, focusing mainly on the more accepted methods to establish identity. Emphasis is provided on the methods applied to bodies in an advanced state of decomposition and/or skeletonized and the contribution of each sub-discipline in the field of identification, including anthropology, odontology, genetics, imagiology and dactiloscopy. Some insights on the history of personal identification and emerging issues and future perspectives are discussed, such as the need of implementation of best practices to identification and the comparative phase of identification. To do this, is of paramount importance that all the countries adopt a same policy to collect ante and post mortem data, which has been claimed by all international agencies dealing with this subject.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Centre of Functional Ecology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Calçada Martim de Freitas, 3000 456, Coimbra, Portugal

    Eugénia Cunha

  2. LABANOF, Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and Odontology, Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences, Section of Legal Medicine, University of Milan, Via Luigi Mangiagalli 37, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Cristina Cattaneo

Authors
  1. Eugénia Cunha
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  2. Cristina Cattaneo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eugénia Cunha .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Legal and Occupational Medicine, Toxicology and Public Health, University-Hospital of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Santo Davide Ferrara

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Cunha, E., Cattaneo, C. (2017). Historical Routes and Current Practice for Personal Identification. In: Ferrara, S. (eds) P5 Medicine and Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67092-8_25

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