Conversing With Death 

Famed Tennessee anthropologist helps the bones speak

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September 20, 2007 Arts and Culture » Books

by Chris ScottOver the last quarter-century, Bill Bass has become a Tennessee institution.
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Over the last quarter-century, Bill Bass has become a Tennessee institution. As a forensic anthropologist based at the University of Tennessee, he investigated grisly crimes, instructed a generation of accomplished criminologists and invented a new way of studying the decomposition of corpses. This last innovation, famously known as the Body Farm, made a two-acre plot in Knoxville world-renowned. In recent years, Bass has teamed with journalist Jon Jefferson to write both nonfiction (Death’s Acre) and novels (Carved in Bone and Flesh and Bone) based on Bass’ work. Their latest effort, Beyond the Body Farm (William Morrow, 304 pp., $25.95), is a memoir that gives Bass a chance to tell more of his true-life (or is it true-death?) adventures.

Bass began reading bones during the Eisenhower administration, and his experiences are so varied and numerous that his memoir effortlessly ranges from ancient Iraqi ruins to cutting edge DNA fingerprinting, from accidental death to mass murder. Like any true scientist, he never misses an opportunity to learn from his failures as well as his successes, but, like any decent human, he is haunted by the cases that elude resolution. As a result, Beyond the Body Farm should fascinate readers interested not only in the ways of CSI-type, gee-whiz technology but in the passions that drive investigators to chase the truth, no matter how long it takes.

Along the way, Bass shares many tidbits of science and history, from the difficulties of burning a body (even a cremation furnace leaves a recognizable human skeleton) to the plane-crash death of Buddy Holly. (Did a pistol found at the site have anything to do with it?) Bass writes that his goal with this book is both to inform and inspire, in the hope that others will follow his lead, seeking new ways to catch the bad guys. But as he notes, “The real breakthrough will come the day we learn not how to solve more murders, but how to prevent more murders.” In the meantime, everyone can hope that Bass will, in his self-described semi-retirement, continue to help the dead tell their stories.Bill Bass appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers Sept. 25 at 6 p.m.

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  • by Chris ScottOver the last quarter-century, Bill Bass has become a Tennessee institution.

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