Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science After Atrocity
by Adam Rosenblatt ’96
Stanford University Press, March 2015
The mass graves from a long history of genocide, massacres and violent conflict form an underground map of atrocity that stretches across our planet’s surface. In the past few decades, due to rapidly developing technologies and a powerful global human rights movement, the scientific study of those graves has become a standard facet of post-conflict international assistance. Digging for the Disappeared provides readers a window into this growing but little-understood form of human rights work, including the dangers and sometimes unexpected complications that arise as evidence is gathered and the dead are named. Adam Rosenblatt examines the ethical, political and historical foundations of the rapidly growing field of forensic investigation, from the graves of the “disappeared” in Latin America, to genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, to post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
Adam Rosenblatt is assistant dean for global engagement and assistant professor of global studies, core division, at Champlain College.