Introduction and Definition
The term “commingling” refers to the intermixing of remains from more than one individual (Fig. 1) and, when present, is a challenging component of many anthropological analyses. The study of commingled remains may pertain to an archaeological context or a forensic context. Within the archaeological context, the focus of study could be faunal (i.e., nonhuman) remains or human remains. Within the forensic realm, discussions of commingling usually refer to the intermixing of human remains, such as may occur from a mass disaster or in cases of mass graves resulting from periods of political, ethnic, or religious violence. Regardless of whether the context is archaeological or forensic, commingling of remains will complicate every facet of the process from recovery to final disposition. The focus of this section will be an overview of field recovery and laboratory analysis of commingled humanremains, although there is clearly overlap with the recovery and...
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Adams, B. (2020). Commingled Remains. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_144-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_144-2
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