How an Australian Body Farm and a Belgian anthropologist are making sense of Neolithic burial sites in Turkey.

Decomposing corpses, in various stages of decay, lay on the ground in an East to West direction. Some are skeletons, laid out in meticulous detail, with not a bone out of place. Others are blackened and bloated, hardly looking human at all.  I’m pointed to a marked-out area where there is said to be a mass burial site with possibly three to six bodies in it. It’s hard to believe we are located at the foothills of the Blue Mountains tourist region, 25kms from Sydney’s CBD.

The body farm, officially known as the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER), is located at a secret location, behind high-security fencing with spiralling razor wire and dotted with security cameras. The 5-hectare plot of land is where scientists study the various ways human corpses break down. 

Dr Eline Schotsman, a post-doctoral research fellow at both the University of Wollongong and the University of Bordeaux in France shows me around the body farm and explains her work.

"There are several graves over there. One is a shallow grave to mimic a typical forensic scenario and the other two are mine. I have dug them in a little deeper and the bodies in them are tightly bound with ropes in a foetal position."

Dr Schotsman’s main research focuses on the mummification process and funerary practices of the Neolithic period. 

One of the main archaeological sites she has worked at is Çatalhöyük, in south-central Turkey. 

Founded around 7100 BC, Çatalhöyük was one of earliest places on the planet where nomadic hunter-gatherers made the transition to agricultural settlers living within villages. The people of Çatalhöyük were also the first to practice burial rituals for their dead. 

“As part of ritual life, the people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within their humble homes. A large percentage of humans remains were found in small pits beneath the floors of the main rooms,” Dr Schotsman explains.

The bodies were also tightly flexed before burial and were often placed in baskets or wrapped in reed mats. Some burial sites had disarticulated bones suggesting bodies may have been exposed in the open air for a time before bones were gathered and buried. 

 “The burial sites I have documented in Turkey, reveal a great deal of information about the people living during the Neolithic time. The human remains there tell us about a lot about how life was 7000 years ago. By analysing the bones, we gain information about their diet, their injuries, the age of death, the person’s status in the community and did they have burial rituals like early types of religion?” 

Dr Schotsman said, Australia’s only Body Farm, allows her to to find out about Neolithic funerary practices through forensic experimentation. 

“I set up burial processes that mimic the processes that the Neolithic people would have used over 7,000 years ago. This kind of research is not new. For over a century, anthropologists have analysed ancient burial sites to try and better explain human history and cultural changes through the centuries.”

Dr Schotsman said Sydney’s climate has the tendency to dry out and mummify human remains rather than decompose, very much like the Neo-lithic process that would have taken place in Turkey. She says understanding the natural drying alterations to human tissues is essential for her archaeology burial questions to be answered.

AFTER is currently home to about 60 bodies, with scientific research ranging from crime solving to forensic archaeology. 

Dr Schotsman points to another body. It’s an elderly woman laying flat on her back, her face is no longer recognisable. Her skin thinned to a transparent shroud over bones. 

“Decomposition begins several minutes after death, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down.” 

The forensic anthropologist gets rather excited about the process of decay describing the entire ecosystem of life involved with-in a decomposing body.

Although it may sound somewhat gruesome and an odd choice of workplace, Dr Schotsman said the Body Farm is a fascinating place to conduct research.

"We understand that it's an unusual way to donate your body to science, perhaps even more so than medical schools. But, AFTER wouldn’t exist without them, so we’re forever grateful of the contribution they make to our science and we’re forever indebted to the donors and to their families.”