MetroIowa feature profile
Saturday May 22, 1999
| Ames, IA. - Dawnie Wolfe Steadman looks inside the open box. A human skull looks back. Without hesitation, Steadman reaches inside for a femur or a pelvis or a humerus. She connects the pieces. A 100-year-old skeleton that belonged to a white male takes shape. "I see a life history, instead of just a pile of bones," said Steadman, a forensic anthropologist at Iowa State University. In the last two years, Steadman has begun helping Iowa's police officers solve crimes by studying skeletonized human remains. Before Steadman came to ISU in 1997, police would often box up old bones and send them out of state for analysis. Now, Steadman can help find answers to important questions: Who died, and how? The 32-year-old assistant professor is equal parts detective and scientist. In her laboratory, deaths are unsolved mysteries. Skeletons are 206-piece puzzles, assembly required. When the pieces fit together, Steadman, just 5-foot 2-inches tall, makes big discoveries. "Her work is remarkable," said Francis Garrity, deputy state medical examiner. This month, Steadman helped Clarke County authorities identify the skeleton of a man thought to have been murdered 10 years ago. Before she removed the bones from an abandoned cistern on the farmstead, Steadman discovered a deformity on the man's vertebrae. "Come to find out, this fellow did have a minor back problem," said Clarke County Sheriff Mark Addison. "She amazed me." Steadman came to ISU from the University of Chicago. At ISU, she introduced a forensic anthropology course. She tells students that in real life disasters, anthropologists sort through commingled, burned or crushed remains to find answers. Then, she gives the students boxes full of bones and a tall order: Figure out how many people are represented in the container. Steadman rarely has the advantage of receiving a whole skeleton. In a case last year, she had only the skull, confiscated by Des Moines police from a pawn shop. Tests on the facial tissue and skull confirmed that the man was middle-aged. His skull probably had been prepared for a museum or medical school at the turn of the century. Garrity and others know of no other anthropologist in Iowa who shares Steadman's expertise. She charges roughly $60 an hour, which Garrity said is a bargain. She invests her fees in the campus lab. Outside the lab, Steadman defies the stereotypical lab-coat scientist. She drinks coffee from a mug shaped like an oversized molar. Her keychain ring is a fake vertebra. Her office is decorated with miniature skeletons and various fake skulls, including one that serves as a candle. The books on her shelves: "Practical Homicide,""Dead Men Do Tell Tales," and "Witnesses From the Grave." By necessity, Steadman detaches emotionally from the "individuals" - as she insists they be called - that lie in pieces on her examining table. She shies from publicity, especially in cases that could go to trial. Steadman sometimes spends more than 100 hours analyzing a skeleton's every bend, bump and break. "You want to do it right," she said. "Otherwise you will have a very short career." |
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By Jennifer Dukes Lee, Register Staff Writer |
E-mail - Dr. Dawnie W. Steadman