Graduate Studies, UNL
Embargoed Master's Theses
First Advisor
William R. Belcher
Committee Members
LuAnn Wandsnider, Phil Geib
Date of this Version
12-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Citation
A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Major: Anthropology
Under the supervision of Professor William R. Belcher
Lincoln, Nebraska, December 2025
Abstract
Deemed material evidence, the artifacts found at the site of a forensic investigation can be essential in understanding what happened and who was involved. With the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), material evidence (ME) takes specific value through a mission to recover and account for the over 80,000 United States Military service personnel missing since World War II (WWII). Found at excavation sites of past aircraft wrecks, battlefield losses, and unknown burials, ME can be utilized in laboratory analysis to help identify any human skeletal remains recovered, or at least help account for the last known whereabouts of missing individuals. The ME must reasonably prove that a specific individual is/was present at the site, with the best example of ME to do this being identification tags. Through text or natural exclusivity, other ME like inscribed jewelry, rank insignia, and footwear can also help with identification; however, these are often vastly outnumbered by the amount of ME useless to the mission. It is currently believed that the Agency’s ME recovery methods have been inefficient, with an excess of the insignificant ME entering the DPAA’s laboratories and needlessly undergoing required documentation and analysis – slowing down Agency operations. Since the DPAA has a congressionally mandated requirement to account for over 200 individuals per fiscal year, this inefficiency becomes an issue as the DPAA has been increasing its number of recoveries annually through partnerships. With the need for an effective system, there is room for optimization in the ME recovery process. This analysis seeks to help fulfill this objective. With a scope of WWII European Theater of Operations recoveries, several hundred Agency reports that detailed ME analysis findings were examined to both understand what ME has been the most useful in accounting and identification, and to establish the statistical extent that ME intake has been inefficient. As a result, a list of the most useful ME was created for use in training and in-field decision making going forward, along with a measured percentage of intake disparity that demonstrates the urgency of this issue and the need for larger optimization actions by the Agency.
Advisor: William R. Belcher
Comments
Copyright 2025, Robert S. Hawkins. Used by permisison