UT's body farm founder Bill Bass received a warm welcome Wednesday night for his lecture about cremation. Interim Chancellor Jan Simek, in one of his last official acts as chancellor, introduced Bill Bass to a couple hundred enthusiastic fans. He described Bass as a pioneer in forensic anthropology and the single, integral component to the founding of the body farm. 

Bass's main topic for the evening was cremation.  He showed images of ovens in various crematories in the U.S. and in Australia. He said ovens are generally high off the ground, usually five feet above the floor for ease of handling the bodies.  You wouldn't want to be bent over all day, Bass joked.

He shared an experience of cremating the body of a Tri-City man and showed pictures of himself pushing the corpse into an oven.  He said there is no law in the U.S. that mandates burials in caskets. "You might as well be in a cardboard box with a plywood bottom," Bass said.

The typical process of cremation begins with approval from the county medical examiner or your physician.  Bass explained this was a necessary step because it becomes increasingly difficult to verify who the individual was after the cremation. 

I'm not trying to sell cremation. It's just another way to dispose of bodies.
Bill Bass, founder of UT's body farm

Next, the body is burnt to ashes.  After the burning of the body, the bones are all that remains of the individual.  After the ashes cool, someone runs a magnet through the remains to remove any orthopedic devices.  "It's absolutely amazing how many parts we can replace in people to keep them going," Bass said, never afraid to add humor despite a somewhat grim topic. 

Bass emphasized the importance of removing any metal or orthopedic devices because the next step in the cremation process is sending the bones through a pulverizer.  This is a machine with two, six inch blades that macerate the bones. "The pulverizer is essentially an industrial-size kitchen blender," Bass said.

Cremations generally take one-to-two hours.  Bass said it takes longer to burn a 90-pound individual than a 300-pound individual.  The increased amount of fat on the larger individual accelerates the cremation process.  Bass explained that crematory workers do not like to cremate 300 pound or larger individuals because of the possible fire hazards.

"I'm not trying to sell cremation," Bass said as a disclaimer at the end of his lecture.  "It's just another way to dispose of bodies."