We have many resources for students, researchers, and law enforcement agencies. These include skeletal collections, decomposition facilities, and more.

Anthropological Research Facility

Dr. Bass and students at the Facility

William M. Bass Forensic Skeletal Collection

The William Bass Forensic Skeletal Collection began with his tenure as State Forensic Anthropologist in the 1970's and consists of over 100 cases that have skeletal elements present. A small portion of relatively complete cases represent positively identified individuals, while most of the ones in this collection remain unidentified. Various types of perimortem trauma are represented in this collection such as gunshot wounds, stabbing and other sharp force injury, and blunt force trauma. The population this series derives from is predominantly from Tennessee. This collection is employed in research and teaching. Please contact Dr. Lee Meadows Jantz regarding use of this facility.

William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection

This skeletal collection was started in 1981 under the direction of Dr. Bass. The collection currently contains nearly 650 individuals and growing. The goal of the body donation program is to build this collection of known individuals for research purposes. Potential research using this collection ranges from skeletal biological and forensic to dental, biomedical and genetics as well as other fields. The demographic profile includes predominantly Americans of European and African ancestry, and a smaller portion of Hispanic ancestry. The age range of the individuals is from fetal up to 101 years. Please contact Dr. Lee Meadows Jantz regarding use of this facility.

Forensic Anthropology Data Bank

The Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB) was started in 1986 with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. The FDB contains extensive demographic information for many cases, including place of birth, medical history, occupation, stature, and weight. The skeletal information for cases includes cranial and postcranial metrics, suture closure information, various aging criteria scores, non-metric cranial information, perimortem trauma, congenital traits, and dental observations. In addition, we are currently collecting 3D coordinate data for cases that come throughout the University of Tennessee and other contributing institutions.

McCormick Collection

The McCormick Collection includes more than 900 specimens with known demographic information. Derived from East Tennessee Medical Examiner (or autopsy) cases, the collection consists of partial human skeletal remains, mostly representing cranial portions with gunshot trauma, hyoids, and clavicles.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

The Forensic Anthropology Center has enjoyed a constructive research relationship with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Some of our recent research initiatives include decomposition studies with Dr. Arpad Vass.

Recent Research

Our faculty and students are involved in a wide range of research involving our collections as well as our facilities. Because of the wealth of resources here, many of the graduate student research projects utilize the ARF or collections housed at the FAC. We also host many visiting scholars that utilize either the ARF or one or more of our skeletal collections. International scholars have visited from as far as the United Kingdom and Australia.

Click here for a list of papers presented in national meetings during 2008.

Click here for a list of papers presented in national meetings during 2007.