AMHERST — Nested within a thickly wooded area behind UMass Amherst’s School of Education, a group of college students stand hunched over the soil in a fenced area, looking for bones.
Using small 4½-inch trowels, the students slowly scrape the dirt across a cordoned-off patch of land they’ve identified as being suspicious. Scraping horizontally across the surface, layers are dug up centimeters at a time — a lengthy but necessary means of excavating when trying to look for human remains. ...