This week at Forbes: Titicaca trepanation, hominin homicide, and 3D printing

Here's what have I been writing on my Forbes blog this week, for those of you who missed it:

• Brutal brawls and cranial surgery discovered on ancient skeletons from Late Titicaca. My friend Sara Juengst wrote a couple of great articles on her research into skeletons from the Copacabana peninsula that juts into Late Titicaca.  All had suffered violent injury, but some showed evidence of advanced medical care.

• World's oldest cold case: a 430,000-year-old murder victim found in pit of bones. Out this week is a report on a cranium found in the Sima de los Huesos ("pit of bones") in Spain. It has evidence of two blunt force injuries, and the researchers think it has to be evidence of murder.

• How 3D printed bones are revolutionizing forensics and bioarchaeology. I've been doing some work with scanning and printing of bones and teeth, and I participated in an SAA symposium on digitization in archaeology.  So I've written up some thoughts on the direction that 3D is taking both forensics and bioarchaeology, and concluded the piece with some open-ended questions about ethics that we really need to start addressing.

It'll be a bit slower next week as I'm on vacation with Kiddo 1.0 (Hotlanta, yeah!).  But I've got some posts for you on various historical people, plus a "body farm" article some time in the next couple weeks.