Just been watching Bettany Huges Top ten Egyptian Mummies.
Quite an interesting program, in it she is often seen in one of the museums in Cairo housing dozens of Egyptian mummies on display.. THee mumies are often investigated and x-rayed. I other programs I have also seen her and other historians handling skulls and human remains from various periods in history, including Viking and Anglo Saxon etc.
In a recent Grand Designs program the developer unearthed Anglo Saxon human bones. These had to be replaced where they found with suitable reverence and ceremony.
The remains of Richard lll after being exhumed were reinterned in Leicester Cathedral with a full ceremony attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other senior church leaders.
If you randomly dug up a grave in your local cemetery, even one hundreds of years old you would be prosecuted for desecration of the grave.
This lead me to the question - "At what point does digging up and generally interfering with human remains change from desecration to archeology, and why is it different?"
A passing souvenir-hunter has made off with your final quotation marks, now to be viewed in the British Museum on written application to the Director of Internet Studies.
It's a good question, Mark......Really couldn't say where I would 'fix the line'.
Quote from: FierceKitty on 29 June 2021, 01:54:06 AM
A passing souvenir-hunter has made off with your final quotation marks, now to be viewed in the British Museum on written application to the Director of Internet Studies.
It's alright.......I've found them.....and returned them to their rightful home.
Cheers - Phil. ;)
It depends.
Her Majesties constabulary will pass it HM Coroner who will decide whether it is a crime scene or an artifact.
Can you now remove the poisonous lead and replace it with a led light, thanks (Shoots, eats and leaves. Thanks Rosie).
Not much use to that particular Egyptian now. TBH we'd still be searching for random lightning strikes to keep warm if scientific investigation wasn't carried out.
It's an interesting question, without a rational answer.
I think the problem lies in what the Americans call "Muh Heritage" (Best said with a Southern accent).
Richard III and the Saxons belonged to a religion which is still "live", so mis-handling their remains is a desecration.
The bad news for those mummies is that the Ancient Egyptian Paganism is no longer mainstream, so there's no big lobby batting for their interests.
See also Pagan norse, Britons, Romans and Greeks.
It's also worth noting differing approaches in modern life.
A typical urban Greek will have a grave for a short while before the bones are disinterred and added to a communal Ossuary.
Rather different to the British victorian Necropolis or sprawling American garden of rest.
If there's no one alive to remember anyone who was still alive to remember the deceased while they were still alive, I'm not sure anyone can really feel that much affront, beyond a sense of slight disquiet at it being a distant ancestor, though the fascination with knowing what happened to them may outweigh that. Maybe 200 years?
Though yes religious sensibilities may play into it in some areas depending on the local traditions. In some places, they have the mummified dead round for tea and parade them down the street on special occasions, as if they were still present and just having a long rest. Not sure how they would feel about someone cutting into them. Though again, it's usually only the dead in living memory for a couple of generations.
Think 'the line' has to be very 'fluid'.
Obviously, where a site will be lost to development / erosion, investigation is a Must.
Other sites not under threat can Vastly increase knowledge... cause of death, healed injuries, ailments, age, sex...place of birth... etc.
And scientific analyses have advanced enormously in recent times. Reburial rather than storage would have made much impossible.
Poor old 'Ice Man' has been poked around in, so many times. And a previously 'missed' arrowhead tuned up! ;D
Some Museum 'artifacts'... Mummies, Shrunken Heads, Scalps.. have been returned to 'owners',,, but think this may be more 'political' .
Then, there are 'Medical Specimens'. The articulated skeletons... a Dentst Cousin had a Skull to pore over... probably sourced from India. And my Late Grandmother's 'Massive' 'Growth', removed late 50s, may stlll be in a jar, somewhere. Don't want it back! :o
Some UK graveyards ARE re-used. Headstones placed along walls. Presumably, any surviving bits collected and re-interred. It was rather 'refreshing' to see a 'grassy hump', without any marker for 40++ years, had been given a simple wooden cross... maybe as a result of 'Family History' research... when visiting an 'old' family grave, recently.
What is truly sickening, is the callous marine 'salvage' of metals from wrecks... even when 'war graves'. >:(
Or, the 'trade' in 'relics' for sale... without regard to human remains... often from eastern europe. >:(
Note: As a child, I picked up some small 'bits' of equipment... parachute silk, flack vest scales, oxygen tubing... from a B17 crash site on Cheviot. The fatalities were recovered after the crash, though.
I recently watched a WW2 TV dig on the 'Ostfont'... when the dig team reverentially boxed up the human remains and presented them to a War Cemetery staff member. I did get the impression that He was a little... 'Thank You... Now what am I supposed to do with THAT!' , though! ;D
I will watch TV progmammes with interest. As to what to d with the 'finds'... will leave to others.
It is a very fine line - It's all desecration but ultimately the decision rests on whether further information from remains will move knowledge forwards.
It absolutely depends on the laws in place in each country at the time the remains were discovered.
Currently countries follow specific guidelines which they have to adhere to. In the UK we have to have a "license to lift" (apply to home office and details on the form must be a followed). Each individual case is considered eg whether it should be a case of preservation in situ or removal and retention. Most of those details are already agreed with the county archaeologist prior to any work being done. The coroner will only be involved if the remains are "recent". That's what happened with Richard III - Even though they were intending to find the bones the team doing the job (Leicester Uni) didn't apply for licenses beforehand.
That meant the skeleton they say is his stayed excavated but covered in tarp for a few days before they could lift it - Epic fail and room for cross contamination and interference!
Sometimes the decision to preserve in situ or retain is trumped by the reason for the dig and remains are reinterred elsewhere - eg the "plague pits" and Roman graves removed for the recent Crossrail expansion in London that some of my colleagues worked on or the remains of WWI soldiers which once identified are returned to the Graves Commission of their respective countries.
It is ALWAYS emotive when human remains are being dealt with and those in the archaeological profession take great care to always treat with care and reverence - Most these days are reinterred or preserved in-situ.
From a community archaeology standpoint NOTHING fires the imagination and interest of the public in an excavation more than human remains!
(I am on the Board of Directors of a commercial/community archaeological company)
Hi
I understand that there has been a certain amount of controversy regarding a skeleton only found in 2012 at Waterloo that is now in a museum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Soldier
Personally I would prefer him to be re-interred with the relevant military honours.
Cheers Paul
Quote from: Scorpio_Rocks on 29 June 2021, 11:25:02 AM
It is a very fine line - It's all desecration but ultimately the decision rests on whether further information from remains will move knowledge forwards.
I very much appreciated your full and very thoughtful explanation to what I consider a serious ethical question. I also appreciate others who tried to come up with some sort of rule. Making ethical decisions is one of the most difficult things humans attempt.
Your first line comes closest, I think, to answering an unanswerable question. If you believe that all human life is sacred as are its residuals then you have a basis for an ethical system which will always pose the question, "How do we now proceed?"
As with all ethical questions, it is never easy since we now have the questions, "What is human?" "What are human residuals?" and "If those residuals ARE human, do they still have a say in the matter?"
The intent of the desecration more or less answers the question of how to proceed but we must always ask questions about the price of gaining knowledge or benefit. For example, It is possible that one day those questions may be asked about the origins of and the response to COVID 19.
FWIW, I have served on our local hospital's ethics board for the last eight year. It has been a humbling experience.
It is all very, very complicated (& I really do not want to start a controversial thread out of this).
But it can come down to a real challenge around what we mean by the words community/society/ethnic memory, heritage and culture.
We have seen it recently with the BLM movement in the UK, where c.14% of the UK population is of non-UK ethnicity and only 3.3% comes from Black or Afro-Caribbean stock*, yet the whole north Atlantic slave trade issue has become highly emotive & politicised- even though there is nobody alive today who even knew anybody alive, who was actually a slave under that aberrant system (I believe).
Similarly we have seen attempts to include the 'British Empire' within the same sphere of the BLM movement. I recently watched a debate where a lady of Arabic extraction ranted & raved on (there was no other words for it) about the evils of the British Empire - yet when challenged on the history and record of some of the Arab Empires misdeeds (and it was pointed out to her that it was Arab slave traders who had started the African East & West Coast slave trades in the first place) she chose to claim that was all "ancient history" and it was not at all comparable.
NB: British Colonialism cannot be condoned in any way but should be recognised as being a historic 'phase' that does not reflect the current values of the society we now live in. And I expect that in another 200 years time the fact that we mostly eat meat and drive polluting oil fuelled cars will be looked back on with similar horror by our heirs!
But cultural memory of an injustice (that has been rightly recognised as such with the North Atlantic Slave Trade) is so strong that the emotional response to the BLM movement has been huge and in some cases played upon and exaggerated (with violent consequences) for modern political ends (NB: I live in central Bristol not far from the site of the Colston statue plinth).
But if we look at slavery as a whole - most of Western Europe suffered similar levels of enforced and institutional slavery (including mass deportation of sub-cultures, branding and mutilation, ownership & trade, torture, even selective breeding programs) whilst under nearly 500 years of Roman occupation. Similarly the word Slave comes from the word Slav - used by the Norse Vikings who traded blonde western European slaves for hundreds of years to the Byzantine and Arab slave markets in the east. ****** the women in a systematic manner on-route to deliver a sort of horrific 'buy one-get one free' policy to their eventual owners. But culturally these historic 'wrongs' have passed into history now - I don't ask an Italian or Swede for reparation or to 'take the knee' as it is (quite rightly) ancient history. There are of course many other instances of historic slavery - there are virtually no organised human societies (be they Aztec, Inca, Zulu, Ashanti, Chinese, Egyptian, Sumerian, Mongol etc. etc.) that do not exhibit some form of slavery - it is a 'Human Sin'.
My own ancestors - on one side of the family were forced to flee their country in the late C17th because of systematic and state orchestrated religious persecution. I don't carry any animosity towards the perpetrators of that persecution, but that was over 300 years ago. But then I am not part of a specific cultural group, one that feels (to this day) that this persecution was a massive injustice - I was not taught by my parents or my religion or my elders that I had an injustice that needed to be avenged or righted.
But my point with regard to the issue of this thread e.g. 'Desecration' is around changes in cultural norms and reconciliation.
It was once acceptable for people to pay to view other humans with physical deformities (alive or dead) at circuses or side-shows - and that has (at least in the West) been stopped by a combination of Laws and also moral changes in society. In the same way as it was once acceptable to own another human being as a slave or bondsman. In the same way that it was once acceptable to have human remains on show as antiquities or curiosities, in a private collection or a national archive or museum.
Personally I think that the display of human remains to the general public - no matter how 'ancient' - is no longer acceptable in an way. Be it a 'bog-man' or Egyptian mummy or a more 'modern' set of remains from another part of the world.
However, there may well be a justification for retaining 'ancient' human remains in research institutions, if that will lead to a greater scientific understanding and knowledge. Be it a London plague-pit bone sample that helps us understand the impact of highly contagious disease or the image (& modern technology now allows strikingly detailed images to be retained) of the beautifully tattooed skin of an ancient Scythian warrior to allow us to marvel at a wonderfully creative lost human culture.
Sorry - a long ramble but this is one of those hugely complex subjects (also highly emotive).
Mark
I will declare an interest in that I studied archaeology for 3 years as part of my degree.
I think that archaeological excavations teach us a huge amount and I would be loathe to see them stopped or even curtailed. However there is an increasing tendency to leave parts of sites intact in hopes of better results from more sophisticated techniques being available in future.
The huge advances in scanning and 3D printing technologies seems to me to reduce the arguments for sticking huge collections of bones and artefacts in boxes in a museum basement in hopes some PhD student will examine them in a couple of decades time.
Of course, I doubt the dead care one way or the other, no matter what happens when we shuffle off this mortal coil. It is the living who are concerned and often have axes to grind (flint or otherwise :) ).
Where's "Homo Naledi Lives Matter!" when you need them :)
Have been pondering on 'display' of 'real' Bones, Shrunken heads, Scalps, etc.
There are arguments for and against. But, consider this?
A 'display' of REAL items can bring home the REALITY to viewers, in a way that photographs or replicas cannot.
A real Skull with a hole in it WAS a real human being.
A real 'shrunken head is 'proof' that other cultures may have had concepts completely alien to our own.
Real Scalps... taken from Indians, (or convenient Mexicans), for 'Bounty', can show the appalling disregard for life of other peoples for avarice rather than 'ritual'.
Replicas can be 'dismissed' as 'It's just a Fake, anyway'. After all, man never did land on the Moon...
To take the argument further...
Photographic images of 'bloated, rotting' battlefield dead, charred tank crews... or the piled skeletal bodies of naked women... 'may' be seen as a further 'Degradation', even after Death.
BUT... without such... War is Glory, Death is Heroic... and a Civilised society could NEVER do this... could they? We ?
I have never been to Auschwitz... and do not intent to. BUT, actually BEING there... where the horrors were REAL... can be really ... REAL, to some who have gone.
If display of real remains,' brings home the message'... so be it.
On the contrary, I think modern re-creations of historical artefacts, beasts and people can have far more impact then a few bones, some tatty bits of cloth and a few feathers that have lost their original lustre. A decent mannequin of a Neanderthal will mean more to the average member of the public than any number of bone fragments. I'm sure my kids learned far more about the Romans from playing Caesar on the PC than they did from traipsing round the Chambers Street museum on wet Saturday afternoons.
I remember visiting the site of Gournia on Crete. A small, Late Bronze Age village of some fifty structures, mostly houses but with a small palace too. I was instantly transported to a settlement of boxy, whitewashed houses separated by narrow alleys, alive with children running through the alleyways, women working in their houses, merchants and farmers selling their wares in the central court. My wife looked around and said,"Oh! Another pile of rocks!" I suspect most people need something to fill in the gaps in their knowledge rto allow them to make sense of what they are looking at.
By all means have some original finds to show the state of things when they come out of the ground but by and large lets present the historical past as peopled by normal human beings largely living ordinary lives, much like ourselves despite their, to our way of thinking, often bizarre beliefs and funny clothes.
Isn't it more about the fact that human bodies - for that is what they are - deserve respect (not to be gawped at).
Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, whether their culture or society is still active or not, these 'artefacts' were once real live living loving human beings and how we honour/handle their remains deserves respect and dignity. It also reflects on our own society and how we treat the living.
Putting them on 'display' to the general public is surely as callous and unthinking as what happened with samples from dead babies and foetuses being stored (without permission) by Bristol Children's Hospital.
The Auschwitz observation is an interesting one - I have not been, but I have visited the Killing Fields in Cambodia and it is horrific.
However, in both instances the people unto whom these terrible crimes were perpetrated have voluntarily chosen to allow these sites to be visited, to ensure that the memory of the terrible crime is not forgotten. But what I would say about the Killing Fields is that after a while you do become numb to the piles of sculls and bones. What is much more meaningful in many ways are the numerous lines of flowering bulbs, originally planted along pathways, that once led to the houses/homes in the many destroyed village communities - where there are no more villages as their residents were forcibly deported and killed and the villages have decayed back into the jungle.
On the shrunken heads and scalps point - this again is interesting. Just because a society has a belief that taking a human trophy and keeping it gives an enemy honour or bestows some sort of honour on the taker of the trophy, does not in a modern world mean it should be acceptable. This is where I think political correctness descends into madness and lunacy!
For a long time this was the argument about allowing the practice of female genital mutilation to continue - it was 'tradition'.
My own - strongly held view - is that there can be no justification for the public display of human bodies or body parts - not for educational purposes, not for religious or cultural purposes and not even for scientific purposes. If we need to keep a human body or body part (no matter how old) to help us with research that will help future generations, then it should be kept in dignity and away from lascivious viewing.
Ithoriel and Big Insect: Very valid points of view.
Ithoriel:
A LOT depends on prior knowledge... kids can interact with animatronic Dinosaurs much more that the old 'Museum' skeletons. And a 'pile of rocks' is just that... until you 'people' it...but just HOW would some of the more Horrific aspects of 'normal human beings' be recreated to provide knowledge, rather than 'Drama'? Re-enactors can show much of normal life. But, Death? Just doesn't work.
When I was a kid, there was a 'streetside' display of a 'ancient burial' by Hancocks Museum, Newcastle. It 'May' have been real or a replca skeleton... don't know... gone now... but it brought home the idea that people 'Died' and were buried ... LONG ago.
Big Insect:
Very big thanks for your observation on the flowers along 'The Killing Fields'. There is still some hope for Humanity after barbarism. But how many, NOW, in the UK, see the displays of 'artificial' Poppies'... and REALLY THINK of what was beneath 'Flanders fields'? Rather than 'Oh they're at it again...back to the mobile'. If 'the Dead' could bequeath 'something' to the living, it would be:'This Will Be YOU someday... I'm NOT a MEME so respect me... and try not to end up like me too early'. Rather think they would go along with that, even if it meant 'being on show'.
The piles of Skulls in Cambodia might become 'numbing'... that can be 'what happens'.. and is why they are there.. 'otherwise normal people' just 'got numb' to killing for a 'cause'.
The 'political correctness' and modern views on 'acceptability' is VERY valid... but does NOT mean that it was not 'acceptable' to those of THAT time. Times Change... and this has to be remembered... those times WERE 'modern' to those there then... even with 'Traditional' concepts. Some things are FOUL... to US, now, and need to be stamped out.. but that is OUR view.. we just have to accept that we must, rightly, impose OUR belief on others. But, remember that other societies throughout History, felt just the same... and are now, whether rightly or wrongly... regarded as 'barbaric... by their counterparts or 'History'.
Display...we Differ. but agree on some dignity and not 'shock/Horror'...as an'attraction'... but to provoke 'thought'.
Sorry if MY views on 'Humanity' are a bit 'jaded'... but for every step 'forward'... from 'someone's point of view'... 'someone else, somewhere, sometime'... will take a step 'back'...and the Dance goes On...
Quote from: Heedless Horseman on 29 June 2021, 11:00:59 AM
As a child, I picked up some small 'bits' of equipment... parachute silk, flack vest scales, oxygen tubing... from a B17 crash site on Cheviot. The fatalities were recovered after the crash, though.
At least, so I thought. Apparently the unditched bomb load went off after the SURVIVORS were safe. No mention of what happened to the two airmen killed in the crash.
Was a very Big Hole and well dug over / scavenged by 1970s. Think we were near rear end, though and fatalities were in the nose.
If the Dead were still there, somewhere... So Sorry. No disrespect intended. RIP lads.
https://acia.co.uk/1944/12/16/b17-44-6504/
http://www.wtdwhd.co.uk/Braydon%20Crag.html
http://www.americanairmuseum.com/aircraft/15640
Perhaps I know an unusual slice of the young but those I know are all too aware of the horrors of war, ethnic cleansing, extermination camps and the like because it has been the leitmotif of the news in their lifetime.
I don't see that the display of human remains will stop the slow erosion of the outrage they feel at "Man's inhumanity to man." As with Big Insect's piles of skulls, slowly but surely it just becomes what happens.
I'm fine with proper scientific research and sensible display of artefacts, but so, so much less happy with the display of human remains as the modern equivalent of the Victorian freak-show.
A couple of tangents:
The first on dead bodies, and in this case victims of conflict.
My Dutch pal Eric had a great interest in WW2 history, and when I knew him has started visiting WW2 battle sites with a muntinational group of enthusiasts.
It was mostly detector and digging work, retrieving small artifacts.
A mess tin here, a dressing case there.
Any sign or ammo or human remains and the authorities were called and local legal process swung into action.
Eric's interest grew and he "adopted" the US 101st infantry (Ciould be wrong here), getting good at identifying their kit.
He moved on to contact several surviving members, and his interviews with them can be found online with a bit of searching.
Several finds which bore identity numbers were sent to the former "owner" (Real owner probably Uncle Sam), and brought great pride to an old soldier.
Lately he has been assisting families fill in the military service part of their stories for funeral orations - because that generation are well into their 90s now.
With the decline in personal contact, Eric has moved back to the digging, but into an elite group.
These are concenrned with locating and identifying the last "missing in action" bodies from the Western Front.
They continue to work closely with local law enforcement, and to-date Eric has worked just "Easy" cases cetred around aircraft crash sites.
Any finds are passed through local legal system, and usually returned to their country of origin for appropriate burial (usuallky in the national equivalent of our War Graves commission).
Eric's story is worthwhile because it illustrates that there's more beyond scrap-metal bandits out there.
The other is more about recent archeology.
There are many ways to present a site.
We'll probably be most familiar with places like York or St Albans (If English they seem like mandatory school trips).
Others may have visited major international sites, or seen them on television.
Presentation has advanced beyond the "Piles of stones" of old.
Both Greece (Knossos) and Turkey (Ephesus) have locations where impressive buildings have been reconstructed to illustrate their original look.
This was controversial at the time.
I think it helpful for the casual observer, and cannot see much detriment if the reconstruction is done carefuly and designed to last.
More recently I visited a site in Greece that had what I can only describe as big transparencies.
Stood in the correct location, the knee high stone walls aligned with an artist's impression of the complete building.
This was a surprisingly effective way to bring old ruins alive.
I can imagine it being improved with augmented reality techniques (point your phone camera at the place and see an "as it was" overlay (like Pokemon Go).
The nice thing about this is minimum disruption to the real stuff, yet you still get the lovely pictures.
Some good points there, Steve. Yes, Organisations will treat remains with respect. Perhaps, more needs to be 'seen' by the public and the young, to 'educate' them... re my comment on the B17 site. :(
I am not so keen on Reconstruction of existing ruins. An 'off site' 'New Build'... yes... but not always applicable. Perhaps the new ideas on presentation will will be a better alternative. Laser mapping and CGI could definitely make virtual 'reconstructions' more accessible to the (now ageing!) mobile / tablet generation!
Again, away from the Human Remains side of the topic...
As a kid, late 60s / 70s in NE England, 'spotting' the WW2 'Pill Boxes' or 'tank traps' dotted around, was a highlight of car trips. Over the years, several of these 'landmarks' were removed... which always created a sense of 'loss'.
In recent decades, there has been more realisation that such structures are also part of Our History... with televised 'archaeology' shows helping greatly. Demolition still happens, though. Local 'Butts' have gone from a rifle range... as have some old 'huts' from disused airfield sites. Probably for safety concerns... but... sad to see.
I can only hope that more consideration is given to the various WW2 constructions that still remain.