A practical field guide for explorers and museum collectors.
This edition provides clear, hands-on guidance for gathering, labeling, and describing human remains and related materials with care and accuracy.
The book covers methods for packing and shipping skeletal parts, photographing specimens, and recording detailed condition and provenance data. It also explains how to collect supplementary materials like hair samples and teeth, and how to organize records so researchers can reuse them. Practical instruction is paired with descriptive standards you can apply in the field, helping you describe characteristics such as skin color, hair form, and eye color in consistent terms.
- How to label, bag, and field-number bones and teeth to minimize damage and maintain traceable records
- How to photograph specimens and compile condition, burial type, and ethnographic details
- How to describe and classify appearance traits (skin, hair, eyes) with standardized terms
- How to prepare and use field record blanks and publication-ready data
Ideal for readers involved in fieldwork, museums, or anthropology collections who seek practical, time-tested methods for careful documentation and description.