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I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    Inside the ‘body farm’ where corpses are left outside to decompose for forensic researchers to study At first glance, it appears to be some kind of serial killer’s preferred dumping ground. But corpses left strewn across isolated woodland in the hills of Tennessee have been put there on purpose to help forensics experts better understand decomposition. Nicknamed the ‘body farm’, the research laboratory in Knoxville provides a unique opportunity for CSI teams to replicate murder scenes in the most realistic setting possible. Read more here!

    Inside the ‘body farm’ where corpses are left outside to decompose for forensic researchers to study

    At first glance, it appears to be some kind of serial killer’s preferred dumping ground.

    But corpses left strewn across isolated woodland in the hills of Tennessee have been put there on purpose to help forensics experts better understand decomposition.

    Nicknamed the ‘body farm’, the research laboratory in Knoxville provides a unique opportunity for CSI teams to replicate murder scenes in the most realistic setting possible.

    Read more here!

    malformalady: A study of vultures at the Texas State University known as ‘the body farm’ is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on. For more than five weeks, a woman’s body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field before it skeletonized by a flock of vultures within hours. Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more. Photo credit: David J. Phillip / AP

    malformalady:

    A study of vultures at the Texas State University known as ‘the body farm’ is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on. For more than five weeks, a woman’s body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field before it skeletonized by a flock of vultures within hours. Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more.

    Photo credit: David J. Phillip / AP

    (via theossuary)

    Cremation, Burial Or Body Farm?

    Four of us sat around talking over the holidays. Eventually we hit on that merry, time-honored question: Do we want to be cremated or buried when we die?

    My vote was decisive. I feel oddly comforted by the knowledge that one day I’ll turn to bone, cocooned, except for bugs and other foraging wildlife, in the earth. My thoughts stray to Lucy, that famous australopithecine ancestor of ours. Now residing in a museum, she dwelled for 3.2 million years in the African earth. If it’s good enough for Lucy, it’s good enough for me (though I’m delighted to enjoy life well past her mere 20 years).

    The cremation versus burial binary, though, neglects a third option: bequeathing one’s body to science. Donating organs to people who need them to survive, or donating an intact body to a medical-school anatomy lab, are fine options. Yet, I’m intrigued also by a less traditional choice: a Body Farm…

    Forensic anthropologist and author speaks about the body farm The first organisms to be attracted to a decaying body are blowflies. This Bill Bass knows well: He’s studied them for 40 years. Bass, a forensic anthropologist who founded the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility – the body farm – spoke at Virginia Intermont College Saturday afternoon, along with Jon Jefferson, as part of Bristol Public Library’s Worldview Scholarship Series. Together, the duo write under the name Jefferson Bass, and have published two nonfiction books about the body farm, as well as six fictional tomes about a forensic scientist who solves murder cases, based on real life experiences and cases Bass and Jefferson have seen. Bass provides the scientific know-how, and Jefferson brings the words to life.

    Forensic anthropologist and author speaks about the body farm

    The first organisms to be attracted to a decaying body are blowflies.

    This Bill Bass knows well: He’s studied them for 40 years.

    Bass, a forensic anthropologist who founded the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility – the body farm – spoke at Virginia Intermont College Saturday afternoon, along with Jon Jefferson, as part of Bristol Public Library’s Worldview Scholarship Series.

    Together, the duo write under the name Jefferson Bass, and have published two nonfiction books about the body farm, as well as six fictional tomes about a forensic scientist who solves murder cases, based on real life experiences and cases Bass and Jefferson have seen. Bass provides the scientific know-how, and Jefferson brings the words to life.

    biomedicalephemera: Exhumed cadaver. Buried 10 months. 150 years before the start of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, medical anthropologists in France were (legally) exhuming cadavers of vagrants and unidentified persons. They were examining the postmortem changes in the body when the circumstances of death were known, and the body was buried or stored in various conditions. By studying known cases, they were more able to examine and identify cadavers of unknown origin, and re-examine exhumed cadavers when a death is deemed suspicious after burial. The science of forensic anthropology languished and was largely ignored during most of the Victorian era, at least in the “Western” world. Even so, the work done by French physicians at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century provided a solid scientific foundation for when the field found much renewed interest, around the turn of the 20th century. Trait des Exhumations Juridiques. M. Orfila and M. O. Lesueur, 1834.

    biomedicalephemera:

    Exhumed cadaver. Buried 10 months.

    150 years before the start of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, medical anthropologists in France were (legally) exhuming cadavers of vagrants and unidentified persons. They were examining the postmortem changes in the body when the circumstances of death were known, and the body was buried or stored in various conditions. By studying known cases, they were more able to examine and identify cadavers of unknown origin, and re-examine exhumed cadavers when a death is deemed suspicious after burial.

    The science of forensic anthropology languished and was largely ignored during most of the Victorian era, at least in the “Western” world. Even so, the work done by French physicians at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century provided a solid scientific foundation for when the field found much renewed interest, around the turn of the 20th century.

    Trait des Exhumations Juridiques. M. Orfila and M. O. Lesueur, 1834.

    (via theossuary)