A Bibliography Related to Crime Scene Interpretation with ...

Training in polar coordinate mapping in a confined space (left) and the total electronic station
Reconnaissance, Surveys, and Mapping Techniques
Obviously, the first step toward processing a crime scene is assessing and recording its position in situ as
well as its relationship to other sites affected by subject(s) and the victim(s). This follows tenets shared by
archaeology, geotaphonomy, and general criminalistics: Crime scenes do not occur in vacuums. They entail points
of access, egress, and are influenced by immediate and neighboring environments. Consider cases in which lone
skulls are found by pedestrians. More often than not, those skulls were once attached to remains which lie nearby.
By recording the environment or context from which the skull was recovered, (beyond its mere two dimensional
situation within a small grid), its peri- and postmortem history may become more clear. The routine recording of
elevations and topographic features such as streams, flood plains, slopes, etc., near remains could provide the
investigator, laboratory analyst, and ultimately a jury with information related to taphonomic processes affecting
those remains and explanations for their ultimate dispositions. Too often investigators take a myopic view toward
crime scenes and concentrate only on the area around the primary piece of evidence. Toward expanding that
perspective, this category contains resources which generally entail topics of search or survey techniques as well as
mapping methodologies and equipment. Several of the articles also apply to logistics and preparation; however, the
reader is also directed to the categories of “General Crime Scene and Death Scene Investigation” and
"Excavation and Recovery Strategies" for more general references which contain discussions about logistics and
planning.
This section is divided into the following categories:
Planning and Reconnaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 005
Surveying and Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 018
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