Sky Burial
In Oxford American, Alex Mar writes about individuals who are giving their bodies to science after death, in order to decompose on a body farm. “However shocking it is to the mainstream American sensibility, deliberate excarnation (or de-fleshing) is also a practice with a history—a spiritual practice sometimes referred to as ‘sky burial,’” Mar writes. The practice relates to Native American, Tibetan, and Zoroastrian traditions of leaving bodies on elevated platforms to decompose. The Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University has been receiving requests from religious donors to participate in their decomposition studies after death.