Down On The Body Farm

Corpses can tell you a lot – if you know how to read them. And just like language, decomposition is dependent on location. Which is why some researchers think it’s time to start studying the dialect of decay in the UK.

- Rob Banino

Dr Anna Williams wants to watch you rot. It’s nothing personal; it’s for science, specifically the science of taphonomy, which is the study of decay and fossilisation. By monitoring how corpses decompose, she hopes to increase our understanding of the subtleties of the process and improve the accuracy with which we can locate and identify dead people, and determine their time of death.

In order to do this, Williams, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Huddersfield, wants to establish a human taphonomy facility in the UK. There are already nine such facilities – colloquially known as ‘body farms’ – around the world: seven in the US, one in Australia and another in the Netherlands.

“What we know about decomposition has come out of the American facilities,” explains Williams. “Before the first one opened in 1981, we really didn’t know very much about how bodies decompose in different conditions. The research that’s been going on since then has really boosted our knowledge.

“And one of the things we’ve learned is that decomposition is incredibly dependent upon local conditions: the surrounding temperature, rainfall, humidity, soil type, ecology, insects, scavengers… it’s all dependent on these variables. So, the information coming out of the existing facilities is very useful but it’s not directly applicable to forensic cases in the UK.”

In short, people in the UK don’t decay in the same way as they do elsewhere. In fact, people don’t always decay the same way in the same country. And we wouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for the pioneering work of forensic anthropologist Dr William Bass.

LYING IN THE GRAVE