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Still Life With Bones review: Harrowing account of exposing genocide

TV dramas use tidy, cleaned-up bones to crack crimes in minutes, but an unvarnished account by forensic anthropologist Alexa Hagerty shows the slow horror of exhuming people killed by repressive regimes

By Michael Marshall

15 March 2023

A woman with her daughter observes the pictures of people who lost their lives during the Guatemalan civil war, as forensic anthropologists from the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) exhume the bodies of one of four mass graves in La Verbena cemetery, in Guatemla City on March 6, 2010, as part of a search to find the 889 people who disappeared during the internal armed conflict (1960-1996). AFP PHOTO/Johan ORDONEZ (Photo credit should read JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images

Still Life With Bones
Alexa Hagerty (Hachette)

NOWADAYS, we are all familiar with forensic anthropology. Shows like Bones and Silent Witness taught us to expect meticulously excavated bodies assembled on tables, elaborate chemical assays and computer-assisted reconstructions of fatal injuries. The anthropologists quip darkly over the remains and solve the case within an hour. The stories are fun, but implausibly neat.

In contrast, social anthropologist Alexa Hagerty’s Still Life With Bones is the real thing: an unvarnished account of forensic anthropologists uncovering and identifying victims of atrocities. It is moving and beautiful, harrowing and horrifying. And the horror doesn’t …

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