Determination of Pb in human skeletal remains from Morocco: implications for time since death assessment.

In forensic contexts, time since death assessment in human skeletal remains is crucial for identification, and both accuracy and reliability are required. In this paper, we present the possibilities and constraints of the use of Pb in dating skeletonized human bones in Morocco. The method was tested on recent as well as archaeological bones of known dates of death. A calibration curve was obtained from the available data in the scientific literature. The Pb initial activity was introduced as an increasing lineal function with time. The Pb dating approach gives promising results only for recent bones. On the contrary, for archaeological bones, the technique has erroneously led to post-mortem intervals in the range of recent bones which constitute a serious limitation of the method. On the other hand, uranium isotopes content in bones is suggested in this work as a possible indicator in placing a studied bone within either a forensic or archaeological context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]