Finding bodies in forests

THE BODY FARM, known officially as the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, is a gruesome place. It is a hectare of land near Knoxville, cut off from the rest of the world by razor wire, that has, for more than three decades, been at the forefront of forensic science. It is both a laboratory which examines how corpses decay in different circumstances, so that matters such as time of death can be established more accurately, and a training facility for those whose jobs require an understanding of such processes.