She Uses Jewelry to Help Identify the Nameless

In 2013, two years into her doctoral studies on forensic jewelry, Maria Maclennan found herself in a mortuary for the first time. It was in Namibia, and she was there to help identify the victims of a plane crash that had killed everyone on board.

It was the first time she had put her theoretical skills into practice, examining pieces of jewelry found in the wreckage and using her knowledge of designs, materials and the industry to provide investigators with leads.

“Being a forensic jeweler is not really a job that actually exists,” Dr. Maclennan, 35, said during a recent interview at her office in Edinburgh. “In some ways, it’s something I’ve made up and am still making up as I go.”

Since then she has helped identify the victims of many catastrophes, including building collapses, natural disasters and a terrorist attack. And while the situations can be harrowing — sometimes, she said, the jewelry was all but fused to human remains — she has approached the job as a professional: “You’re wearing your forensic gloves and it’s all very methodical and detached and disembodied from the person, the human being.”

But there is a part of the process that she finds emotionally difficult. “It’s at the end, the returning, when you give the belongings back to the family, which really strikes me,” she said. “You look at the piece as a sort of a proxy or representation of the individual. Especially, I think, in the absence of the human body.”