Contemporary Pagans and the Study of the Ancestors

Abstract

In 2007, English Heritage and the National Trust initiated a public consultation process regarding the display of human remains at the Alexander Keiller Museum at Avebury. This was a response to contemporary Pagan calls for reburial of a child’s skeleton displayed there (BBC News 2007; Jenkins 2011 and this volume; Tatham this volume; Thackray and Payne 2009; Historic England 2015). This chapter derives from ethnographic research (semistructured interviews and participant observation fieldwork) undertaken between April 2008 and March 2012 for a doctoral research project as well as nearly twenty years of personal engagement with the British Pagan community. This project was designed to provide qualitative analysis of relations between heritage and archaeological professionals and contemporary Pagans and did not attempt to establish any quantitative data on the proportions of people in these groups who hold particular views. It focused on the arguments and ideas behind contestation of sites and human remains. This chapter examines how the archaeology of ancient human remains aids contemporary Pagans to reinvent beliefs and emulate practices of the pre-Christian past. It also explores how excavation and display of human remains provides an arena for counter-cultural elements of contemporary Paganism to contest the authority of the heritage establishment. The sheer diversity of values, practices, and expression make it challenging to define contemporary Paganism. Pagans usually conceptualize the divine as immanent in nature either as pantheism (the divine permeates reality) or panentheism (the divine permeates reality but also exists beyond it). The divine may be seen as unified (monotheism), gendered polarities of the God and the Goddess (duotheism), or multi-faceted (polytheism). Additionally, some Pagans may be animists, which Harvey (2005: xi) defines as the belief that the world is inhabited by many persons, only some of whom are human, or even be atheists. Harvey (2005: 28, 2013: 206–10) suggests that religions may be better defined by their practices and behaviours rather than their beliefs. This is slightly harder to do with Paganism since most Wiccans and Druids tend to practice their rites by standing in circles of fellow Pagans and invoking elemental spirits at the four cardinal directions, while many Shamans, Heathens, and other reconstructionists do not.