Defense Date
2023
Document Type
Directed Research Project
First Advisor
Tal Simmons
Second Advisor
Baneshwar Singh
Third Advisor
Joe Jones
Fourth Advisor
Erin Gorden
Abstract
Over 500 commingled skeletal remains from the East Marshall Street Well in Richmond, Virginia were discovered in 1994 during construction of the Kontos Medical Sciences Building on the Virginia Commonwealth University medical campus. The skeletal remains were analyzed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and were revealed to be primarily individuals of African origin, with recovered artefacts suggesting a 19th-century context. Some of the Ancestral Remains may have been procured through grave robbing by resurrectionists and medical students, a practice that disproportionately targeted the bodies of enslaved and poor African Americans. To restore dignity to these individuals, the Family Representative Council, a group of descendant community members chosen to stand in for relatives of the deceased, requested the re-association of these remains so that they could be properly and respectfully buried. Pair matching and articular grouping of bones were accomplished by the Smithsonian anthropologists but, due to the inability to associate non-articulating bones, they were unable to re-associate discrete individuals. The goal of this study was to estimate the ancestry of the 26 cranial samples and 19 mandibles using anthropological methods (craniometrics) and next generation sequencing, then compares the results of these methods to assess the similarities or inconsistencies. The crania and mandible samples matched by the anthropologists at the Smithsonian were then compared to the results from the next generation sequencing analysis to confirm the accuracy of anthropological pairing. Anthropological measurements were entered in Fordsic 3.1, a program that classifies adults by ancestry and sex using a combination of standard measurements of known crania of different population affinity. All but one of the crania were classified by the program to be of African descent, which was consistent with the initial Smithsonian analysis. The extracted human DNA were utilized for generation of human DNA profiles using next generation sequencing. The ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep Kit (Verogen Inc, USA) generated DNA sequence profiles from approximately 231 nuclear DNA loci, for individualization, biogeographical ancestry, and various phenotypic characterizations, which assists in determining the most culturally appropriate burial and memorialization of these individuals. From the 45 samples, 34 were able to provide reliable ancestry estimates. Primarily, the 34 samples were determined to be of African descent except for four samples estimated to be of European descent. The ancestry assessments between Fordisc and the next generation sequencing data were consistent on a broad identification of population affinity but differed in regional specificity. Crania and mandible matches made by the Smithsonian were unable to be confirmed with DNA profiles, but due to the strong anthropological evidence of match, they were unable to be excluded. This work aids in ensuring a proper burial consistent with the individual’s culture is obtained, allowing the restoration of dignity that was taken from them.
Rights
© The Author(s)
Is Part Of
VCU Master of Science in Forensic Science Directed Research Projects
Date of Submission
5-5-2023