(no subject)

[scottobear]

Adipocere..... feared, loathed, and misunderstood by mankind for thousands of years. A little-known by-product of the advanced decomposition of dead human bodies, adipocere is a mystery to all whom first encounter it.
here is the NUMBER ONE site exclusively about adipocere on the web. Their aim is to make adipocere (also known as grave wax or mortuary fat), better understood, less feared, and more appreciated for the natural and scientifically useful substance that it really is.
Check the web site out: http://adipocere.homestead.com/

warning, it has photos of a graphic nature after the cover page.

This stuff is fascinating. from environmental aspects to exploding caskets.

Comments

serves me right for clicking

[i.livejournal.com]

quite revolting, if i do say so. i think i'll refrain from eating today.

Re: serves me right for clicking

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I warned you!

sorry about hurting your appetite.

Re: serves me right for clicking

[i.livejournal.com]

like i said, my own fault. and i didn't even look at the pictures. i just read the descriptions.

Re: serves me right for clicking

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

that's all it takes... the imagination is more graphic than any photo, I think.

Re: serves me right for clicking

[i.livejournal.com]

and with my visual orientation...

[blackhellkat.livejournal.com]

Yep the more adipose tissue you have the more adipocere you make cause its a by product of the hydrolysis of the fat in you body. Funny thing is you have to have just the right burial conditions to have adipocere....too dry and hot and you get mummification. Oh I'm just a wealth of this interesting grave info.....and real fun at parties thanks to my forensic science degree (said tongue in cheek.....since I'm never allowed to talk about my gross school topics at home)

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

i'd love to hear more!

so many watery deaths here... and so humid, I imagine the bone-diggers down here slip on the stuff all the time.

Re:

[blackhellkat.livejournal.com]

Well unless you were exhuming a grave for a reaaalllly good purpose I doubt you'd find much adipocere on a corpse in the water or in a shallow unprotected grave or in no grave at all. If insects, scavengers and spiders have access to the body it'll usually be strip clean before adipocere has a chance to form. Honestly it depends on how long a body has been out and animal activity. But exhuming human remains from a grave unless they is a damn good reason isn't done a heck of a lot. When I was an field archaeologist I remember how terrified the field supervisor used to be of finding human remains.....it basicallly meant shutting the site down and lots of red tape, upset customers and contractors (cause they couldn't build)....such was the nature of contract archaeology. We'd choose not to exhume and dig in other areas if we found evidence of a grave in the soil patterns (this was when I was digging in DC near a hospital where there were lots of pauper graves).

Now university based archaeology is a bit of a differrent story....they usually exhume bodies with great trepidation or not at all because the ancestors of the exhumed are usually not thrilled with having their remains disturbed. Around the late 80's when I did my field work in Illinois a lot of the museums devoted to the mound builder indigenous people were in the process of re-vamping displays of burial sites that were open to the public. It was thought to be in poor taste to disturb the remains therefore there was a big push to study the everyday sites of a culture in attempts to understand the everyday life of that culture(versus going out and hitting grave sites with the compartively opulent grave goods).....of course this just mean that pot-hunters (a negative term for people who target grave goods to collect or sell to collectors) would covertly disturb the graves and archaeologists wouldn't usually have a chance to see what was in the grave at all (I once went out at night to watch a pot hunter work...they are usually locals who know where all the hot spots are....this particular one would dig a hole big enough for his had and gingerly pull out grave goods by feeling around)

ummm anyway now that I've run off at the mouth (sorry eeek)hehehehehe what was the question?

Re:

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

*grins

Neato, and infprmative you are... I always enjoy your posts. :)

graverobbers have a long and nifty history to me. :)