A body, when revealed again to the earth's surface, will tell the story of its own burial. If eye caps dig into the underside of the eyelids, if screws wind through the jaw to clamp the mouth shut, if cotton is packed into the ears, anus, nose and throat, the body was embalmed. Which really means it was most likely buried with funeral rites. For the archaeologist, this means it was excavated from a cemetery (perhaps one long forgotten) and not a random burial site. Embalmed bodies are not normally buried in random plots.
The skin flakes away after an embalmed body is lowered into darkness. Cracked, like the surface of an old painting; shattered like a dropped mirror. When the body's fluids leak into the coffin lining, conditions become perfect for mold - a thin layer of black spores spreading over the skin's surface. The softest under-parts decay faster because of the moisture, while the brain is preserved in shape and form. Embalming reverses the direction of decay - legs first; torso and head last. The forensic taphonomist searches for these signs; determines if a body was dug up from the grave of an unknown cemetery (for even these go missing, become anonymous) or if perhaps a murderous shovel sealed a lost man's fate beneath the cold dirt. Sometimes there is no skin or casket left, and the eyecaps and screws must be sought out in the soil layer, loose, like bones popped from sockets.
It's the peeling-paint skin that amazes me. The paint of old houses on Iowa highways. The paint of closed-down car garages and gas stations. Of unrestored chapels and ancient caves. When a body is not preserved, the skin cracks and slips away in pieces, like little continents, drifting into the soil, disappearing into the sediment layers.
When buried by people who long to keep you alive, your body becomes a kind of painting, with a delicate layer of color and brushstroke. And when buried by murder, it collides with the chaos - chaos, of course, not being lack of order or cause, but in the mathematical sense. Continents colliding, landscapes merging. The body's true nature revealed.