overarching technologies of information disasters are becoming more frequent and storage and retrieval and networking and more serious as communities around the communications, and 5) the creation of world become more vulnerable. The Understanding infrastructure, evaluation, and transfer of increasing vulnerability of communities Disaster research results. and consequent intensity of disaster The workshop brought together a repercussions, particularly in regions Anthony Oliver-Smith small group of leading researchers from where anthropologists have traditionally across the relevant subdisciplines of IT, studied, have challenged the field to engineering, and social sciences along come to grips with the practical and "How do the events of September 11, with representatives of agencies and theoretical problems that disasters 2001 affect our understanding of crisis organizations involved in crisis response. present. and crisis management?" was the Because disasters are multidimensional In recent years, anthropology has question that led the National Science phenomena, emphasis was placed on added significant cross-cultural, Foundation Directorates of Computer and finding areas of mutual concern and methodological, and theoretical breadth Information Sciences, Engineering and cooperation across the various to study of disasters. Archaeology has Social Sciences to convene a workshop disciplines. Represented among the revealed how cultural systems often entitled "Responding to the Unexpected" social sciences at the workshop were incorporate long developed harmonies or on February 27-March 1, 2002. As an sociologists, psychologists, political contradictions with their environments. anthropologist with roughly 30 years of scientists, and economists. I was the sole Ethnography has illustrated how disaster research and consultation in disaster intervention based on narrow research response and recovery, I was invited to sometimes disrupts native adaptations assist in replying to that question as well Anthropologists have and diminishes rather than augments developing an appropriate research been at the forefront of disaster recovery. Earlier disaster agenda in crisis and disaster management the effort to link research concentrated almost entirely on that would reflect the changes that 9/11 immediate responses to calamity and has initiated. socially structured first-tier agency intervention and left The NSF workshop focused on patterns of vulnerability unexplored the fluctuations in response developments in information technology and recovery that transpire over time. (IT), engineering, and the social sciences to disaster impacts… Yet, disasters are enduring events with that can enable construction of effective many punctuations in reaching their response organization at the instant of representative from anthropology. A inevitable outcomes. Anthropology's disaster. The specific tasks of the final report is being compiled from the long-term perspective and in-depth workshop were to begin understanding presentations and break-out sessions and fieldwork have added significantly to and developing the new technical, social, will be due out in early April of this year. comprehending the protracted and policy requirements for responding to Although social scientific disaster repercussions calamities provoke. An unexpected disasters to improve the way research has traditionally been the anthropological perspective has further society deals with such events. preserve of sociology and geography, the enhanced comprehension of factors that Initial discussions were organized issue of disaster has become increasingly lead to people's vulnerability, bringing to around the 9/11 attacks, earthquakes, and salient to the research and practice light the roles that age, gender, social nuclear accidents. The workshop concerns of anthropology. class, race, and ethnicity play in putting participants then worked toward Anthropologists at the University of people in harm's way. From ground level establishing research priorities in Florida in particular have made important anthropology has asked who are the breakout groups on (1) urban contributions to the study and likely victims of calamity, and what are infrastructure and its protection; (2) risk management of disasters. Moreover, they the practices that lead to unequal shares assessment; (3) organizational integration have been at the forefront of the effort to of safety, simultaneously broadening the and response, including policy and link socially structured patterns of ethnographic data base for cross-cultural regulation jurisdictional issues and virtual vulnerability to disaster impacts. Natural, studies of disaster. and actual organizational behavior; (4) technological, and politically driven UF Anthropology agile: faculty members wrote the most The department has undergone From the Chair grants in the department’s history last remarkable changes this past year. We year; our new graduate students arrived are now a comprehensive laboratory Allan F. Burns on campus with enthusiasm and keen department: this past year saw the curiosity, and the department office staff construction of laboratories in human This year began with the shocks of 9/11. met department needs with initiative and molecular genetics, biomechanics, Forensic anthropologists Tony Falsetti, grace. The department was able to secure forensics and osteology, digital imaging, Mike Warren, and graduate student two lines even in this difficult year, one video editing, Geographic Information Heather Walsh-Haney went to ground for Rick Stepp, and another for Systems and ethnography, southeastern zero, helping Elizabeth “Buzzy” Guillette. Rick US archaeology, and zooarchaeology, to make sense receives his Ph.D. from Georgia this and Diaspora studies, just to name a few. of the attacks summer, and will hold a combined Florida Anthropology now has the and the position between Anthropology and Latin resources to give “hands on” proficiency destruction to American Studies. His work on that only laboratories can provide. people’s ethnomedicine in southern Mexico will The department is a key program in lives. Then further strengthen our medical the University of Florida, in part because in October, anthropology interests in the department. of the enthusiasm of the faculty, the Graduate Rick will also work closely with the Land quality of the students, and the critical Research Use and Environmental Change Institute research that is done on both a statewide Professor (LUECI) and the GIS/Ethnography and world scale. The department has also Marvin Harris passed away, and his computer lab. flourished through the generosity of death affected us as well. Dr. Guillette’s research in the Yaqui donors who have funded the new lecture The department, and the university, areas of Sonora on the effects of series, graduate research in Latin suffered very deep cutbacks this year as environmental contaminants had startling America, and excellence in the Florida economy suffered from the results: children who grow up in undergraduate and graduate research. I loss of tourism and travel. Key faculty industrial agricultural areas are hope you enjoy this issue of the positions could not be filled, teaching and developmentally slower than their newsletter and also hope that you can research assistantships were placed in counterparts where industrial agriculture help us with a gift. Alumni and friends jeopardy, and we have all had to make has not spread. Buzzy and her work have are the heart and soul of the department; the best we could in a much different been featured on the Discovery Channel, your support is the value added that world. But the department is spirited and many news reports, and a slew of moves us forward. scientific publications. Was DeSalvo the “Boston Strangler?” On November 19, 2001, Michael Warren worked as a member of an interdisciplinary forensic science team that exhumed the body of the so-called “Boston Strangler” – Albert DeSalvo – from its Massachusetts grave in order to re- investigate his murder and, if possible, collect genetic evidence that might exonerate him in the death of Mary A. Sullivan, the last victim of the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo was murdered in his cell at Walpole State Prison, Massachusetts, after he allegedly decided to reveal that he was not, in fact, the Boston Strangler. DeSalvo – who was never charged or convicted as the “Strangler” because there was no evidence linking him to any of the crime scenes – was murdered while in protective custody where he was serving a life sentence for convictions unrelated to the stranglings. No one was ever convicted of DeSalvo’s murder. DeSalvo’s body was taken to a forensic facility at York College of Pennsylvania where some of the nation’s top experts re-investigated his 1973 stabbing death and collected DNA samples. Warren was part of a scientific team that included York College professor of anthropology John S. Levisky; forensic pathologist Michael Baden (of O.J. Simpson fame); criminalist Henry Lee, and University of Florida forensic toxicologist Bruce Goldberger, among others. The re-investigation was the result of a request by members of both the DeSalvo and Sullivan families, who are unconvinced of DeSalvo’s earlier claims that he was the “Boston Strangler.” DeSalvo claimed he raped and manually strangled Sullivan, but his confession did not match the autopsy report: there was no genetic evidence suggesting rape and no evidence she had been strangled by anything other than ligatures.