Paper short abstract:

Forensic science research that focuses on the insects that contribute most to bodily decomposition has found it necessary to discuss Climate Change – something that both unmakes the epistemic basis of their contributions to crimino-legal death investigations and remakes their modius operandi.

Paper long abstract:

The unmaking of the body after death is primarily performed by, when conditions are amenable, local carrion feeding insects. A body of research has been made over the past 60 years by forensic anthropologists and entomologists based on observations of human and non-human surrogates decomposing, the purpose of which is to aid crimino-legal death investigators with a minimum time-since-death estimation. This knowledge is dependent on prolonged observation and analysis of the relationship between microclimatological conditions of an area and the local flora and fauna on the rate of decomposition. That climate change affects the living is a given, but it also affects the dead and the knowledge about and from the dead, revealing both epistemic surprises and epistemological threats to historical- and place-based field research. Changes which disrupt place-based and species-specific knowledge concerning the rate of decomposition, such as temperature and moisture, disrupts the basis upon which human decomposition researchers construct their utility for crimino-legal death investigations while also imposing the need for new reconstructive research. This talk reviews the emergence of forensic scientists including mention of climate change as relevant to forensic decomposition research and includes observations from participator field research identifying a simultaneous disruption to – or unmaking of – the epistemic basis of forensic entomology and rejuvenation and remaking of – if not flat-out excitement at the prospects and need of ‘new’ – entomological research.