Forensic taphonomy is a new, emerging field, which originated as a subfield of forensic anthropology. The word ‘taphonomy’ derives from ancient Greek, where ‘tapho’ is ‘burial’ and ‘nomos’ is ‘laws’ – so it is the study of the laws of burial, or to be more precise, it is the study of burials applied in a legal context.
It emerged as a science in the 1940s, as a support for paleontology to explain how and why animals become preserved and fossilized in their environment. Due to this need, taphonomy expanded as the study of processes which affect decomposition, fossilization, burial and erosion; so far so good, but what has this got to do with forensics? Well, forensic taphonomy investigates the factors which decompose the bodies and alter evidence which is subject to a medico-legal investigation. Currently, the two major branches of forensic taphonomy are biotaphonomy and geotaphonomy.
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September 2020 Online Zoom