EditorialKatrina Spade, the co-founder and chief executive of Recompose, monitoring the temperature of a mound of wood chips that contains a human body at Western Carolina University's human decomposition facility in Collowhee, N.C., on March 7, 2015. (Mike Belleme/The New York Times)
EditorialTomb of Bishop Beckington, Secretary to King Henry VI Tudor. The English double-tombs show a life-like statue of the defunct on top and a body in decomposition below. (1451).
EditorialJade eye plaques, Chinese, Han dynasty, c206 BC-c220. These jade eye covers actually resemble the shape of eyes. The holes at the ends are for attaching the plaques to a cloth or other material. They were also made in glass, a cheap substitute for thos...