Maria Maclennan Uses Jewelry to Help Identify the Dead

For nearly 5 years, Dr. Maclennan has additionally taught three-week-long packages on forensic jewellery on the Edinburgh School of Artwork, a part of the College of Edinburgh, the place she is a senior lecturer in jewellery and silver smithing. (She additionally simply accomplished a Diploma in Diamonds and Diamond Grading from the Gemological Institute of America department in London.)

Aditi Ranganathan, 22, a final-year scholar in textile design, attended two of the packages early in her research. “I nonetheless speak about it to at the present time as a result of I feel it exhibits that as creatives we are able to exist in a number of completely different areas,” she mentioned. “Lots of people, once they suppose jeweler, they suppose, ‘Oh, wedding ceremony rings,’ however the reality Maria is ready to use her craft to assist individuals is one thing actually cool.”

The first instruments of sufferer identification are DNA, fingerprints and dental information, Dr. Maclennan says. And whereas jewellery alone is just not sufficient to make a scientific forensic identification, it does have a helpful place as what she calls a “secondary identifier.”

“Jewellery is powerful,” she mentioned. “It will possibly survive lots of trauma, and sadly it will probably outlast the human physique.”

Along with apparent connections comparable to names or dates engraved on wedding ceremony rings, “there may very well be a bodily clue or attribute on the jewellery that tells us when it was made or bought, or who it was made by or who it was bought by,” she mentioned. (In Britain, for instance, some jewellery is stamped by a authorities assay workplace with icons referred to as hallmarks, which point out particulars comparable to the kind of metallic, the date and the maker’s mark.)

She additionally famous that jewellery typically may very well be a repository for DNA, pulling off her personal chunky silver-ring set with a big citrine and exhibiting it to a customer. “When you look via the stone from the entrance, you possibly can see every kind of gunk on the again,” she mentioned. “The jewellery business is at all times telling us to scrub our jewellery, however from a forensic perspective, if we don’t, it may be an excellent vessel for DNA.”