Because young children provide incomplete accounts of the past and tend to acquiesce to leading questions, procedures are needed to help them describe past events fully, without contaminating memory. This study tests the efficacy of "narrative elaboration," an innovative procedure designed to expand children's spontaneous reports of past events, reducing the need for leading questions. One hundred thirty-two children from 2 age groups (7-8 years and 10-11 years) were assigned randomly to 1 of 3 preparation conditions: (a) narrative elaboration intervention, (b) instructionbased intervention, and (c) control group. After participating in a staged activity and subsequent preparation sessions, children were interviewed about the activity. Children in the narrative elaboration condition demonstrated a 53% improvement in spontaneous recall over the control group, without compromising accuracy. Younger children using the narrative elaboration procedure performed at the level of older children in the control group. Discussion centers on implications for interviewing child witnesses and preparing them for courtroom examination.

Time-since-death estimations are usually based on physical decomposition of the corpse, insect succession, and contextual associations. The rates of change and succession are based on decomposition studies, most of which control access of scavengers to the corpse; however, many naturally exposed corpses are subject to scavenger modification. These modifications change the rate of decomposition, the pattern of insect succession, and the context of associations, thus altering estimations of time since death. A controlled feeding study with captive wolves and road-killed deer is pertinent to understanding canid scavenging and how scavenging may alter postmortem changes. During feeding, the wolves commonly dismember and devour the deer in a predictable sequence. Although there are some variations in the usual sequence, the carcass is always moved, and skeletal elements are separated, diminished in size and scattered. Scavenging must, therefore, be considered in estimating time since death.

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The interpretation of archaeologically-derived skeletal series is dependent on the elements and portions of elements preserved for examination. Bone and bone portion survival is affected by factors, both intrinsic and extrinsic to the elements themselves, that influence deterioration and preservation. Among the intrinsic variables, the density of the element and element portion are particularly important with respect to the degree of preservation. Recently reported bone mineral density values from a contemporary human sample are compared to the survival of prehistoric limb bones of the Crow Creek specimens, a fourteenth-century massacre skeletal series. The contemporary density values are positively correlated with Crow Creek element and element portion survival. Two calculations of bone mineral density, however, are more closely related to preservation than a third. Such density information has implications for assessing minimum number of elements and individuals and documenting taphonomic processes.

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