A small selection of pictures from my trip

UT Knoxville Trip - SFW

UT Knoxville Trip - NSFW

view, comment, ask questions, enjoy

Almost all day on Friday, we worked on a case as a way to apply our culminated knowledge. We split into three groups of four and we were each given a skeleton in a box.

All the cases we worked on were unidentified/unclaimed victims from east TN, so I made sure that I did my absolute best and consciously handled the remains with the utmost care, love, and respect. We needed to determine age, sex, ancestry, log any trauma to the bones and determine what they were and when they took place, do a skeletal inventory, and take metrics of the bones (optional).

After lunch we made a quick trip back to the Body Farm. Rebecca was excited to show us "fresh" decomp since they had just placed the thawed bodies from Tuesday on Wednesday, and one fresh one straight from the hospital placed the previous evening. The fresh guy was so fresh he didn't show any visible signs of decomp. The other guys from two days ago were...not so fresh. But still recognizable. I wasn't really affected by it, because it seemed so surreal.

We weren't at the facility for long, maybe 1/2 hour. We returned back to the classroom so we could do our presentations.

My assessment of the one my group got was (in brief) a white female, edentulous, between late fifties to early seventies, with severe canid activity present on the bones. Meaning, in layman's terms, she was gnawed by some pretty big dogs or wolves after death. She was missing her left leg from the knee down, and almost all the bones in both of the hands. The lack of skeletal evidence and canid destruction made it fairly difficult to determine both sex and gender (the innominate bones were especially trashed)

But...I was right in all my assessments. Rebecca herself said that we did an amazing job with what little we had.

I was so super-proud of myself!

After we did our presentations, we got our completion certificates and immediately loaded up in the car to head home. The trip home was uneventful. I was picked up by Jimmy at around midnight, tired but pleased. I was happy to see my baby again after being gone so long. He took me to Taco Bell for a midnight crunchwrap.

And that concludes my trip in review!

All day Wednesday we did trauma. I learned to identify antemortem, perimortem, and postmortem traumatic injuries to bone, different types of fractures, ballistic injuries, stabbing or slashing injuries, blunt force trauma, and sharp force trauma. I was back where I was most comfortable - with bones.

Most of the cases that we got to look at were unidentified or unclaimed victims, some cold cases from before I was even born. This made the work especially poignant.

( Cast of Characters )

( Thursday )

More about my last day later. We're a Code Blue on groceries and even though I don't wanna, I must replenish our food supply lest we starve.

A word about the program coordinator - Rebecca Wilson is not only the program coordinator for our group, but is also the one who finalizes body donations, arranges their pickup, assigns placements, and generally oversees the Anthropological Research Facility.

The video is not terribly graphic but there are some clean skeletal parts shown.



Anyways. On to ( Tuesday )

More on the rest of the week later.

Pics will be forthcoming. For some reason, LJ voiceposts were not working for me all week. So I have a lot of information to compress into one big post instead of several little posts. This also sucks because I didn't write down my daily observations or anything and now have to recall it all piece by piece.

( Sunday )

( Monday )

More week-in-review later. Must have food now!