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The role of ¹⁴C dating in the identification of Missing Persons in Cyprus

Quarta G¹, Eleftheriou T², Engin I², Maruccio L¹, D'Elia M¹, Calcagnile L¹

¹CEDAD-University Of Salento, Lecce, Italy, ²Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, Cyprus, Cyprus

The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bicommunal committee with the mandate to locate and identify the skeletal remains of 2002 missing persons from the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964, as well as the events of July 1974.

During the periods of conflict, several archaeological sites and old cemeteries were used as primary burial sites, as they were easily accessed by the persons involved in the interment and little effort was needed to conceal the bodies.  The relatively large post-mortem interval and the generally poor post-mortem preservation of the skeletal remains poses an additional challenge in the forensic examination process, particularly in the absence of a context or artefacts/evidence.

Between 2016 to 2020, the CMP has been collaborating with CEDAD-Centre of Applied Physics, Dating and Diagnostics at the University of Salento to clarify the relevancy of several cases by using radiocarbon dating. The CMP submitted 139 unresolved cases to CEDAD, out of which 112 cases were determined to be archaeological in date and irrelevant to the CMP project. For the remaining samples bomb ¹⁴C was detected in bone collagen and the bomb peak dating technique was then used or further investigation of the cases.

The obtained results show that ¹⁴C dating on human remains recovered in archaeological sites and old cemeteries is an effective method to determine the year of death of the remains and then to identify the forensic significance of the cases recovered by the CMP.