If you hike through the woods north of campus, you may just happen upon a fenced-in area tantalizingly marked “Keep out: UMASS AMHERST TAPHONOMY LAB.” A quick search on your smartphone reveals that taphonomy means “the study of decaying organisms over time,” only increasing the mystery.
The mysterious zone is the field site for Associate Professor of Anthropology Ventura Pérez’s ’00G, ’06PhD six-week-long summer intensive course, “Field and Laboratory Methods." Pérez, a specialist in bio-archaeology and skeletal biology, conceived of the summer archaeological field school to focus on the excavation and analysis of human skeletal remains while he was a graduate student in anthropology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
The taphonomy lab, home to a mock grave site and a mock crime scene, is fenced and clearly demarcated because in the early years of the lab, a hiker actually did stumble upon what he assumed to be hastily buried remains (the class uses model skeletons at the field site), and dutifully called the UMass Campus Police.