Body farms

Excerpt

The establishment of the first ‘body farm’ in 1981 by Dr. William Bass, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK), represented a unique opportunity in the forensic sciences to study human decomposition using cadavers in a controlled research environment. Until that time, the literature relating to human decomposition had relied upon anecdotal evidence following exhumations of historical and archaeological grave sites [1‐3] or case reports by forensic pathologists [4, 5], often providing contradictory results. Prior to, and following, its opening, controlled research typically utilized animal analogues (particularly porcine remains) to simulate human decomposition [6‐8]. The Anthropology Research Facility (as it was formerly known) provided the first opportunity to compare human and pig decomposition in the same environment [9], providing an important finding for forensic taphonomic studies. Disappointingly this study was not repeated until recently at the same facility and many researchers (including this author) have used this study over the past two decades as evidence of the similarities between pig and human decomposition, even though we now know there is little evidence to support this. …