They call it the River of Death: The world’s first forensic jeweller on helping identify refugees killed at notorious crossing
Pioneering investigator travels to Greece to help trace the families of drowning victims from their jewellery
An academic and designer pioneering the use of jewellery as an identification tool has been enlisted to help trace the families of refugees killed as they tried to reach Europe.
Dr Maria Maclennan, thought to be the world’s first forensic jeweller, is one of a team of scientists working to identify the bodies of refugees on the border between Greece and Turkey by studying rings, necklaces and other belongings.
About 2,000 refugees have lost their lives in the struggle to cross the Evros River. Jewellery is often the only item that remains after documents, mobile phones and passports are destroyed in the water.
Maclennan’s work focuses on features such as engravings, inscriptions, serial numbers and microscopic markings on gemstones, bracelets, rings, necklaces and watches which, she says, can often link the piece to a specific jeweller or geographical location.
The route through Turkey into Greece is seen as a key way into the European Union for migrants escaping wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Maclennan, a lecturer in jewellery and silversmithing at Edinburgh University who also works for Police Scotland, said: “We are working to document and photograph more than 500 items recovered with the deceased along the Evros River, commonly known as the River of Death.
“It is a particularly treacherous migratory route between Turkey and the north of Greece.”
Maclennan has been helping investigators identify victims by studying jewellery found at crime scenes and disaster sites for almost a decade. Her previous assignments include the Germanwings aircraft crash in the French Alps in March 2015, when 144 passengers and six crew died, and the Mozambican airliner crash in Namibia in 2013, in which 33 people lost their lives.
One of the aims of Maclennan’s latest project is to build an online catalogue of personal effects, and is the first of its kind dedicated to missing migrants.
She added that the catalogue would launch later this year and was connected to more than 100 missing migrants. “It will bring visibility to erased identities and enhance opportunities for identification,” she said.
Including photography and storytelling techniques, she hopes the catalogue will provide a muchneeded tool to help support the identification of those who lost their lives.
“We hope the project will provide a unique opportunity to bring together experts from a wide range of disciplines to help contribute to the creation of investigative leads,” said Maclennan.
“We will be arranging a series of design workshops with experts in both Scotland and Greece, as well as online and also hope to
eventually produce an accompanying book.”
Maclennan believes expertise acquired from the project can be passed on to countries where specialist knowledge in the area is limited.
After studying jewellery at art college, Maclennan worked with designers, forensic anthropologists and police officers during her masters degree on a project at Dundee University’s renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. This involved working on a jewellery database classification system to assist victims’ families trying to describe individual items.
Her work in Greece is funded through an Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Award and is the result of a collaboration involving herself, forensic pathologist Professor Pavlos Pavlidis, and forensic anthropologist, Dr Jan Bikker.
Pavlidis, based at Alexandroupolis General Hospital in Evros, Greece, has work spanning more than two decades and has examined the bodies of more than 430 deceased migrants.
His university hospital is the largest on the Greek side of the river and its forensic department receives all of the retrieved bodies found by Greek authorities.
Human remains expert Bikker works with the Platform for Transnational Forensic Assistance Forensic Missing Migrants Initiative, a charitable organisation that works to raise awareness of the significant barriers to identifying missing migrants across the Mediterranean. It also provides support to grieving families of the missing.
It will bring visibility to erased identities