The Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF) serves as a resource for forensic anthropology students, researchers, as well as state and national law enforcement agencies. Research into questions relating to time since death, the postmortem interval and decomposition processes for human remains under various topographical and climate conditions are conducted at FARF.

The FARF is a 26-acre outdoor human decomposition research laboratory at Texas State’s Freeman Ranch. The Texas State facility is spatially the largest facility of its kind in the world. The FARF is used by the forensic science community to gain knowledge about human decomposition and developing methods for determining the postmortem interval or time since death. The FARF is also used to train forensic anthropology students, law enforcement, and medicolegal personnel in methods for searching and recovering human remains in a medicolegal context.