No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America's Oldest Skeletons

I'm married to a bioarchaeologist, so while I'm useless with bones myself, I know that you can learn a lot about them. No Bone Unturned is a biography of Doug Owsley, Head of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute. This book tells the story of his career, repatriating the remains of Americans murdered in Guatemala, identifying the victims of mass crime scenes like the Waco Massacre and 9/11, correcting the historical record at Jamestown, and in the centerpiece of the book, going up against the government to study Kennewick Man, a 9000 year old skeleton unearthed on the banks of the Colombia River.

This book is a lot of fun to read, but it uncritically presents Owsley as a scientific hero in the face of obstructionism from the show more Army Corps of Engineers and the superstitions of the Colville tribes. And reality is much more complicated. Kennewick Man is a unique scientific treasure, but he's also a person. At the time, Owsley believed based on skull morphology that Kennewick Man and the similarly aged Spirit Cave Mummy did not resemble contemporary Native Americans. This was evidence that human migration to the Americas did not solely occur over the Bearing Land Bridge.

Except of course, skull morphology isn't scientific. Subsequent DNA tests showed that Kennewick Man and the Spirit Cave Mummy are closely related to current Native American populations. The long lawsuit may have enabled scientific study of the bones, but Owsley's adversarial tactics feel like a strategic loss. Tribes have to be partners in American archaeological work, and despite protestations that Owsley's career has been full of respect for them, I didn't see it here. That, plus changes in scientific knowledge in the 17 year since, make this a book that has not aged well. show less

Fascinating and informative. I could not put it down from the first page to the last. Read it in a single sitting of 5 hours skipping my dinner such was the urge to continue reading I could not break off to cook anything! Thoroughly recommend. Also an excellent bibliography that will provide further hours of reading pleasure.

Very intersting book. Wonderful book to understand what archeology is all about.

Very interesting read. I would absolutely recommend this.

Den missvisande titeln till trotts är boken faktiskt läsvärd. Den handlar till största delen om en grupp forskares strid för att få undersöka mänskliga kvarlevor, i detta fall ett som är ca 9000 år gammalt, utan att behöva lämna över dem till indianstammar så snart det visat sig att de är över 400 år gamla. Man får följa den intressanta striden ifrån att kroppen hittas till den långa domstolsprocessen avslutning.