The ms Estonia Shipwreck Revisited: New Developments in the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Northern Baltic Sea

It is widely believed that international law does not enable to protect effectively the wreck of the ms Estonia against looting. The protection regime established under the 1995 ms Estonia Treaty is binding and violations against it can be effectively sanctioned in respect of only the nationals of its few States Parties, resulting in numerous jurisdictional gaps. This study argues that the law of the sea and administrative law provide the means for safeguarding the ms Estonia wreck against pilferers. Estonia has repeatedly designated tiny buffer zones around relatively modern shipwrecks outside its territorial sea. Finland can follow this practice in relation to the ms Estonia wreck that lies less than 19 nm from its baselines. In effect, Finland would be entitled to regulate and authorize activities directed at the shipwreck with the right to exercise its enforcement jurisdiction against persons that disturb the peace of the mass grave.

Preserving Holocaust History: Geophysical Investigations at the Ponary (Paneriai) Extermination Site

Holocaust mass grave sites in eastern Europe can be difficult to investigate due to a paucity of historical documentation relating to the events and because using traditional invasive archaeology methods raises concerns around the disturbance of the remains of Jewish people. When combined with other lines of evidence, including historic photos and eyewitness testimony, non-invasive geophysical methods help to effectively identify and demarcate buried features at Holocaust sites, limiting unnecessary excavations. Between 1941 and 1944, as many as 100,000 people were murdered at the Ponary (Paneriai) extermination site in Lithuania, but many critical details of the site layout during this period are still to be resolved, including the location of some of the mass graves and confirmation of an escape tunnel that was used by slave labourers to escape captivity and certain death at the site. In this study, we show how a combination of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) profiling, limited ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data, and bare-earth elevation data (from a light and distance ranging (LiDAR) dataset) were used to confirm the location of a large unmarked mass grave with a diameter of ~25 metres and depth of ~4 metres. Additional ERT profiling at a second location imaged the entrance to an escape tunnel previously uncovered by an archaeological excavation in 2004, and detected a ~5 metre section of the continuation of the tunnel, approximately 33 metres away from the tunnel entrance. The geophysical results are supported by evidence from limited archaeological excavations, historical photographs, eyewitness descriptions of the site layout, and testimonies from the few survivors who managed to escape Ponary.

Forensic investigation of a mass grave at Ovčara, near Vukovar, of victims killed by the Serbian army in 1991

Objective: To evaluate the contribution of forensic research to the discovery and analysis of mass graves of victims of the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries at Ovčara, near Vukovar, and to the identification of exhumed victims as missing persons who were forcibly removed from Vukovar Hospital on 20 November 1991. Methods: We analysed official international documentation and transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Data on causes of death and injury classifications were derived from autopsy reports and their interpretation by a forensic specialist. Identification of individuals was based on a report by a representative of the Commission on Detainees and Missing Persons. Results: Scientific and expert evidence from forensic research of the Ovčara mass grave shows that 198 male and 2 female bodies (one of a pregnant woman) in civilian clothes were exhumated from the site, with an average age of 32.5 years, including 3 minors. The determined manner of death for all 200 exhumed bodies was homicide, and the cause of death for 95% of the victims was a gunshot wound to a vital part of the body, in 67% of cases to the head. Traces of medical treatment and hospital workwear were found on 53% of the victims. 96% of the bodies were positively identified, 46.5% using classical forensic methods, and 49.5% by DNA analysis. Most of the victims were Croatian nationals of the Catholic faith. Conclusion: Forensic analysis and identification confirmed that the war crime victims exhumed from the Ovčara mass grave were listed as missing persons who disappeared from Vukovar Hospital. Their murder was used as relevant evidence of planned ethnic cleansing in court.

Seeing like a scientist: subjunctive forensics and shared ways of seeing in the Spanish forensic archive

For two decades, Spaniards have turned to forensic science as a mode of unearthing diverse forms of evidence that shed light on the mechanics of fascist repression that emerged during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed it. Due to the lasting effects of Spain’s Amnesty Law, which prohibits defining Franco’s victims as victims of crime, these exhumation projects exist at the unruly boundaries of legal procedure. In the absence of courts equipped to manage the evidence exhumed and produced in these endeavors, photographs documenting the forensic process are not sequestered by the law. Instead, they are made to be seen. Drawing on what the author describes as subjunctive forensics, she analyzes the emergence of new bodies of knowledge —or what could be called the forensic archive— in order to understand how visual evidence that straddles the scientific and the political, particularly photography, is produced, circulated and safe-guarded in contemporary Spain. Drawing on ethnographic research and the experience of photographing mass grave exhumations, the author explores how shared forms of seeing are produced, acquired, and shared among the community of practice surrounding historical memory work. By focusing on how professional and skilled visions are constituted, the article argues that it is in the production, circulation, and display of forensic photography that Spaniards visualize an uncomfortable past while also imagining alternative political futures.

Inter the Mesolithic —Unearth Social Histories: Vexing Androcentric Sexing through Strøby Egede

This article dissects the methodological toolbox of essences referred to as the Mesolithic, attempting to grasp its calculus. The autopsy then sets about investigating the reductionist problems of essentialism and androcentrism that have spread throughout the Mesolithic project like a malign cancer. Especially the insistent practice to sex supposedly important things and activities as male is confronted. The mass grave at Strøby Egede, eastern Zealand, Denmark, serves as a very detailed example. An effort is thereafter made to convey some of its sociohistorical specificity.

The last battle of Anne of Brittany: solving mass grave through an interdisciplinary approach (paleopathology, anthropobiology, history, multiple isotopes and radiocarbon dating)

Mass graves are usually key historical markers with strong incentive for archeological investigations. The identification of individuals buried in mass graves has long benefitted from traditional historical, archaeological, anthropological and paleopathological techniques. The addition of novel methods including genetic, genomic and isotopic geochemistry have renewed interest in solving unidentified mass graves. In this study, we demonstrate that the combined use of these techniques allows the identification of the individuals found in two Breton historical mass graves, where one method alone would not have revealed the importance of this discovery. The skeletons likely belong to soldiers from the two enemy armies who fought during a major event of Breton history: the siege of Rennes in 1491, which ended by the wedding of the Duchess of Brittany with the King of France and signaled the end of the independence of the region. Our study highlights the value of interdisciplinary approaches with a particular emphasis on increasingly accurate isotopic markers. The development of the sulfur isoscape and testing of the triple isotope geographic assignment are detailed in a companion paper [1].