title: Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death--An Exploration of the Haunting Science of Forensic Ecology
author:  Jessica Snyder Sachs 
description: In 44 B.C., a physician named Antistius examined the fresh corpse of Julius Caesar and, in science journalist Jessica Sachs's words, "announced that he knew which of the would-be emperor's twenty-three stab wounds had proved fatal," thus giving birth to a new science.
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  ### Annotation
  
  **'Engrossing, emotionally honest and forensically fascinating' - Dr Richard
  Shepherd, author of *Unnatural Causes***
  
  
  In *Traces* , Professor Patricia Wiltshire will take you on a journey through
  the fascinating edgeland where nature and crime are intertwined.
  
  
  She'll take you searching for bodies of loved ones - through woodlands, along
  hedgerows, field-edges, and through plantations - solving time since death,
  and disposal of remains, from ditches to living rooms. She will give you
  glimpses of her own history: her loves, her losses, and the narrow little
  valley in Wales where she first woke up to the wonders of the natural world.
  Pat will show you how her work with a microscope reveals tell-tale traces of
  the world around us, and how these have taken suspects of the darkest criminal
  activities to court.
  
  
  From flowers, fungi, tree trunks to car pedals, walking boots, carpets, and
  corpses' hair, *Traces* is a fascinating, unique, and utterly compel