13th February 2009, 10:22 PM
The debate over human remains has become polarised between science and sentiment, with caring people with sensibilities taking the moral high ground and attacking the cruel, unfeeling archaeologists. However, the point needs to be made that Druids are not the only people who have feelings for human remains.
Many years ago I was directing the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery before its destruction by ploughing. We were working on the grave of a child, a little girl, with a brooch and some beads, when one of the team asked me if I thought it was a shame to disturb her. I paused to think. 'No', I told him, 'she has been forgotten for 1,400 years but now she is back with us, we remember her again'.
This spur of the moment thought led me to consider the issue. We don't know much about the religious beliefs of these people, but know that they wanted to be remembered, their stories, mounds and monuments show this. Their families are long gone, taking all memory with them, and we archaeologists, by bringing them back into the world, are perhaps the nearest they have to kin. We care about them, spending our lives trying to turn their bones back into people. We look at the things they made and used, and, by enjoying the things that they enjoyed, human hands and minds touch over the centuries. Their bones give us direct evidence of who they were, where they came from, how they lived and even what they looked like. The more we know the better we can remember them.
Reburying human remains destroys people and casts them into oblivion: this is at best misguided and at worst cruel. Perhaps we archaeologists have been wrong to argue our case purely on scientific grounds and not admit that we, too, care. We must recognise that dead people are still part of the human race and should be cared for and respected.'
Kevin Leahey, in British Archaeology, March/April 2009, p 10
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