| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the reconstruction of crime scenes in the Netherlands in 1900-1930.
Criminalistics and the study of the crime were still relatively new in this age and depended on a web
of forensic and investigative pioneers, new techniques for identification, and also a new attention for
the material elements of crime scenes: the silent witnesses. The history of criminalistics also shows a
recurring theme of strict separation between the human world and the natural world. Although
investigators had to literally reconstruct crime scenes, they also had to refrain from interfering with
it. In this thesis I use insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and apply them to two criminal cases
in which the famous criminalist C. J. van Ledden Hulsebosch featured as a forensic consultant. By
analysing these cases through a material-semiotic view, I argue that, in practice, investigators had to
compromise their ideal of separation if they were to stand up to the challenges of modern crime
scene investigation. | |
