Dr. Bill Bass founded the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee in 1980. Here, human remains lay exposed to the elements. Some bodies are in plastic, some in clothes, others naked, and even some bodies are in the trunks of cars. These bodies are studied as they decay. The first body was donated in May of 1981. Dr. Bass instituted a numbering system so that research reports would refer to bodies and not names. For example, the first body donated in 1981 would be referred to as 1-81.
At first the Body Farm was designed to answer basic questions: How long does it take for an arm to fall off? When does the skull start showing through? At what point is all flesh lost and the body is reduced to bare bone? But now, the Body Farm has revolutionized anthropology and continues to help solve crimes, as shown in Beyond the Body Farm.
The Body Farm would go on to do wonders in forensic anthropology, a term that was not even coined at its conception.