Human Remains- Retention or Reburial?

[BAJR Host]

then leave it on a bus

?When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.?
William Blake

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Hmmm-compulsory free DNA profile, though I suppose that would be the next 'logical' step after compulsory ID cards.
What would be after that, I wonder, compulsory 'chipping' like you can have done for pets?

[Curator Kid]

Maybe they'd be happier if we could all be conveniently tattooed with bar codes that have to be scanned whenever you do anything?

[historic building]

or how about some sort of contactless technology like the bank card advert with the guy in the swimming pool slide (I am sure these things have a proper name) so we can be monitored all the time without knowing...

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

The vast majority of bodies that get excavated are nameless individuals, for which there is no way of knowing who they were in life. This allows us, as archaeologists, to have a proffesional detachment from them as people who were once living, breathing folks, the same as anyone alive today. So as such it is easy to see their remains as something to be studied, recorded and then archived away for possible future study.
But, what if the bodies are less than a century old? as have been excavated,are they once recorded not reburied? is this done because of the possibility of living relatives? is it easier to show more respect to the dead if they are more recent? how can we draw a line between those that should be reburied and those that can be treated as archive material?

[trowelmonkey]

On a philosophical level I don't at all. I don't believe I've ever approached an skeleton other than respect. Funnily, the same as I do with dwelling places (which after all are the resepticals of many of our hopes and dreams). I don't believe any of us can truly know the innermost workings of another whether they died yesterday or 4 millennia ago. I'm pretty sure that in both cases they cried when they were babies, and learned to toddle and prattle in time. I bet they both laughed and cried too and that they had definit likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams and whether one believes in an immortal soul or not they are now gone.

I don't think it is disrespectful to store the bones. Each epoch has its own notions of what is respectful. Nor were all people treated with the same respect at all times. If we start reburying then I think we must make value judgements that we may have no right to make. Did the sacrificial victim go willingly? then do we pose him the same? What if s/he died far from home wishing only for a hug and mum's barley gruel? If an Iron Age woman is buried with her jaw torn off does she get a special ceremony to heal the wounds of an oppressive patriarchical system or do we allow the communities judgement to stand? For the deep past for instance, there is a real possibility that the rite of burial was a rite of exclusion to be feared. Do we eat them to "bring them back"?

Our way of getting the bones "to speak" which is what forensics is all about after all strikes me as the most moral thing we can do in our age.

Our paradigm is about information. I take the archaeologist's role in this very seriously. Our society requires joint narratives and we can supply them. Gone are the days when the world was formed anew in each reciting of the tribal epic and it won't be back as long as we have this highly mobile culture. Admittedly our language is dry. I fear this is a legacy of the horrors unleashed by the National Romantic movement ultimately culminating in the Third Reich. We need to strike the balance better.

We rebury the recent dead exactly to placate the living because, yes, there are two paradigms at work at once. we're not the only culture to do this. Anyway, it strikes me that the church has always been pragmatic about bodies irregardless of theosophical fashions. Churchyards are full of re-arranged bodies.

I know one of the most common objections against retention and display of the dead cited is the "tittering public." I'd just like to point out that people's reactions in the sight of death are often superficial. Ask any priest about the number of people who giggle hysterically at funerals. What they do in front of the case is not what they go home with. In this highly sanitised world I think it good to look death in the eye and know it not so terrible. For that reason I emphatically believe that the bones in the case be real. If they are not always displayed to the best effect is an entirely seperate issue in which I have sympathy with HAD. To paraphrase Pat Crowther, "don't hug a tree until you at least know what kind of a tree it is."

PS- Dave I do respect your views and the questions you're currently wrestling with. These are my sincere thoughts on the matter. TM

[Tim]

We could record the bones on a database. We just need to scan them with a laser scanner (for extenal physical uses) and an MRI scanner (for internal physical uses). The resultabnt 3D scans/models can be examined very easily. Resin models can be created using drip resin casting and CNC cutting tools to "finish off". This technique was used to recreate the flint arrowhead in Otse the Iceman's back. Only willingness and money is stopping us doing it, the techniques and equipment already exist.


"Freedom of ideas is one thing, freedom of the purse is quite another". Edward Harris

[Oxbeast]

What about DNA/isotope/chemical composition analysis? Another reason to keep the bones is the developement of unknown future techniques. There have been several new techniques deveopled in recent years.

[Windbag]

Bring on the Star Trek style replicator...

[kevin wooldridge]

quote:Originally posted by Oxbeast

What about DNA/isotope/chemical composition analysis? Another reason to keep the bones is the developement of unknown future techniques. There have been several new techniques deveopled in recent years.

I remember this similar discussion from the mid 1980s. At the time the pace of rescue archaeology was such in some of our larger cities that sampling strategies were introduced (some of which are with us today).

The point made at the time was that we were sampling based upon 1980s technology and that this did not take account of future potentialities. Whilst I have/had some sympathy for the idea, the cost of storage and conservation of unprocessed archaeological artefact and ecofact seemed to be the main deterrent for archaeologists putting finds aside for later...apart from human remains of course. (I still recall standing in various Museum of London warehouses contemplating shelf upon shelf of boxes and bags of human remains....).

Well I guess it could have been worse, imagine if archaeologists got all sentimental over roof-tile fragments, another material which itself may become significantly more important if and when technology developes to the point of any of us understanding the why and wherefore of its origins, occurence and distribution:face-huh:






With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...