La importancia del concepto persona, familia y muerte para la antropología física forense

Abstract

While forensic physical anthropology is known for studying human bones found in various stages of biological decomposition to develop a biological profile of a person for a forensic context, its theoretical and social background is not so well known, because this discipline goes beyond established and applied descriptive techniques aimed at identifying an individual. This article outlines the concepts of person, family, and death from the perspective of social anthropology to provide a foundation to serve as a theoretical basis for this discipline, in order to show the correlation between the techniques used and the imperative that the person be identified by those who knew him/her, thus contributing to the processes of death and mourning rituals that involve entire families suffering from the physical absence of any of their members.