The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Bass, William M.. Death’s Acre. Berkley, October 5, 2004. Kindle.

In William M. Bass’s nonfiction book Death’s Acre, Bass details his career as a forensic anthropologist. Bass is the creator of the Anthropology Research Facility, also known as the Body Farm. The facility is located on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The Body Farm is the only research facility of its type in the world where students can study the process of human decomposition.

Bass tells the story of the origination of his idea for the Body Farm and its creation through a series of cases on which he was called to confer. In one case, Bass was asked if he could determine how long a cow had been dead by looking at its skeleton. Bass suggested that if the farmer would be willing to kill another cow and let it decompose naturally, they could perhaps determine how long the first cow had been dead. Bass indicates this was the germination of his idea about the Body Farm.

Bass further describes the studies the Body Farm allowed him and his students to conduct. The studies benefited both the field of anthropology and the criminal justice system because they gave guidelines for the first time to determine how long a body had been dead.

Bass includes descriptions of some of his most interesting cases. For instance, he was one of only two anthropologists who had the opportunity to evaluate the bones of the Lindberg baby. Additionally, Bass was involved in identifying some of the corpses found at the Tri-State Crematory after it was learned that the facility was not cremating the bodies. Instead, the crematory was stacking the corpses up on the property.