Washington and Colorado are the two states in the United States (US) which this year officially legalized the composting of human remains into fertilizer. But apart from that, long before the US also had a corpse field.
In the middle of a forest a few kilometers from the Alcoa Highway in Tennessee, USA, is a 1 hectare plot of land surrounded by a wire fence. This is a body farm or corpse farm.
Yes, in this field of corpses, scattered human bodies are left to rot in the open, locked in the trunk of a car, or submerged in water. Quoted from IFL Science, Tuesday (28/9/2021) all these human bodies are closely monitored by scientists to see what happens next, for research purposes.
The concept of a body farm for corpse research is actually not something new. This idea was first conceived by anthropologist William M. Bass in 1971.
At that time, Bass wanted to better understand the process of decomposition of the human body after being asked by law enforcement to analyze a person's body in a criminal investigation.
Police found the graves had been dismantled and the bodies inside looked fresh. This finding is very suspicious for a body that is thought to have died from the civil war.
This discrepancy also convinced Bass that further study of the decomposition of corpses was needed. He believes that knowing the exact process and the variables that can influence it, such as temperature and exposure, can help law enforcement find useful clues, such as the time and circumstances of death when the body was found. From here, Bass had the idea to open a body farm in the world.
Initially, Bass relied on unclaimed bodies from medical examiners or family members for his research. Then there began to be people who wanted to donate their bodies to be left to rot in the field and be investigated.
Currently, there are seven operating body farms across the US. All of them study various aspects of decomposition, provide training to forensic investigators on how to handle bodies at crime scenes, and provide important guidance to law enforcement in the case of death investigations.
All body farms work in more or less the same way, although procedures will vary from farm to farm. When arriving at the body farm, the corpse will be photographed, measured, and blood samples taken.
Furthermore, the corpse will be placed in whatever situation the forensic team plans to study, for example sun exposure, buried underground, submerged in water, etc.
Sometimes the corpse is placed under a cage to prevent animals from eating the corpse. However, some were left open to observe what happened to the corpse.
The scientists then observed the bodies as they decomposed. Depending on the stage of composition they study, they can collect samples from the body at different times. Sometimes corpses are left for weeks, sometimes for years.
Research in the field of corpses may sound bleak and frightening. However, there is much to learn at this facility, from how insect populations are affected by the presence of decomposing carcasses, to how decomposing bodies affect the fertility of the surrounding flora and fauna.
Recently, scientists have also flagged thriving plants as an indicator of buried bodies in them, because decaying bodies can enrich the nutrients in the soil.