Human Remains Excavation

[monitor lizard]

As a starting point for docs on human remains in general:

Simon Mays, 'Human Bones from Archaeological Sites,' English Heritage Centre for Archaeology, 2003. This is supposed to be available on the EH website but I couldn't find it.

Brickley & McKinley, 'Guidelines for the Recording of Human Remains,' IFA. 2004http://www.archaeologists.net/modules/icontent/inPages/docs/pubs/humanremains.pdf

And to quickly revert back to the Church discussion - in my view the CoE or any other religious organisation are exactly the same as any other developer. Some are easier to work with than others!

Cheers

ML

[sniper]

well, from my experience, I know cases of church bodies treating excavated remains with disdain, if not downright disrespect, but then I also know of units doing the same thing. I also know of a Medieval Jewish cemetery (one of only two in the North of England) that is now a lovely supermarket, and excavations of Bronze Age tombs that were only interested in pottery grabbing and thought all the human bone was animal. I think there is still a deep seated belief in archaeology that human remains are in a category somewhere below that of finds and they don't really need to be studied, that it is fine to leave them dirty and mouldering away in plastic bags while the finds from the same graves are conserved and displayed. Think it was Oxbest some time ago on here who expressed the belief that we don't need to study them and that its common sense to say short lives, hard lives, bad teeth, arthritis. That reduces human remains to diseased things and is extremely simplistic. Just in terms of the pathologies, every site I work on I see things I haven't seen before, but more than that, these are the people who made everything that is seen by some as proper archaeology and they deserve to be studied and understood.

++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++

[Sith]

quote:Originally posted by sniper

I also know of a Medieval Jewish cemetery (one of only two in the North of England) that is now a lovely supermarket

Are you referring to The city branch of S*insburys in York, on the site of the former Jewbury cemetery? If so, what's your point, Should the developers have just bulldozed the site instead? As far as treatment, study and re-interment of the excavated remains are concerned, I recommend you read YAT's 1994 monograph on the site (Archaeology of York 12/3).

Sith

[Tim]

There was a Jewish Cemetery excavated in Winchester excavated in the early/Mid 90's (one of my friends was the site director) the skeletons were reburied by the local Jewish Community after scientific analysis.

Excavating "Jewish" human remains in Israel can be dangerous with the "Ultra orthodox" or "zionist" communities and "religious police" refusing to let you excavate or analyse human remains. They come on site and harrass you and basically close you down. You can even get telephone/written death threats even though the remains might not be "Jewish" or "Israelite".

Jews and Muslims must be buried "complete" i.e no bits missing within 24 hours (so they can enter heaven/paradise-thats also why for example in Islamic sharia law a thief - who stole an item that was "attached"/"protected""guarded","not tied down" etc would have a hand amputated in order to be "a marked man" in life and easily spotable by God and therefore denied access at the entrance to Paradise- this comes from the Sumerian and probably older concept of "an eye for an eye") . The Israelis have highly specialialised religious humain remains/forensic scene of crimes experts who go to bomb explosion sites etc to recover the slightest fragment of human remains for identification and burial.

Under modern UK law it is impossible to bury/cremate the deceases for legal reasons- post mortems, death certificates, undertaker, church,temple, mosque, priest,rabi, iman, crematorium availabilty, deceased last wishes/testament/will etc (I've just suffered a sudden death in my family in the last 2 weeks so this is from personal experience). The fallout and delays caused from "Dr Death" Harold Shipman case is enormous if somebody has died in hospital or under medical supervision particularly if they were given morphine etc.


Hindus in Britain need to be cremated and their ashes scattered on a holy river normally the Ganges. Many have their bodies/ashes sent back to India for this however a stretch of the River Severn near Bridgenorth I think, has been officially designated a Sacred place/river by the goverment and the Hindu religious authorities where they can scatter the ashes. There are probably others so if anybody knows please tell me.

At least 3 of my own family have had their ashes scattered to the wind or water in various places in the UK. Not all Graves are "permanent". Here in switzerland it is common practise that a grave plot is only rented out and "occupied" for 20-25 years before the cadaver is exhumed and placed into a common grave or ossurary. In certain regions, Zurich for example, the local geological conditions means the bodies tend to convert into adipocire which cause health hazards to the exhumers and isn't particularly pleasant to look at causing psycological trauma etc.



Little Tim

[mercenary]

Oooooo... I don't know what adipocire is but it sounds very nasty. Something to do with fat no? I definitely wouldn't fancy exhuming someone in the ground for only 20-25 years. I consider 18th century bodies a bit too fresh for my liking.[xx(]