Digging Deeper: Comment on Resolving the Human Remains Crisis in British Archaeology

Abstract

I think it’s worth very briefly putting the issues in this excellent paper into a wider context. As the authors rightly say, the debate about the archaeological use of human remains in Britain can superficially look as if it is part of an international shift in attitudes that focuses especially on indigenous minorities in post-colonial nations – but it is in fact quite different. This does not, however, stop some campaigners from seeking to make such links, often obliquely and sometimes disingenuously. Archaeologists should resist this. At Stonehenge, for example, in his attempts to force reburial of recently reexcavated prehistoric human remains, Arthur Pendragon has referred to “our ancestors” and “ancestral remains”. In 2010 when he successfully argued that the Charity Commission should treat the Druid Network with official recognition as a religion, he said, “We are looking at the indigenous religion of these isles” (BBC 2010). When I searched the website of Honouring the Ancient Dead (“a British network organisation that advocates respect for ancient pagan human remains and related artefacts” (www.honour.org.uk)), I found 14 documents in which “indigenous” appeared at least once (e.g., “British Pagans use similar language to Native Americans and other indigenous communities”). Reviewing an exhibition of the Lindow bog body at Manchester Museum, Emma Restall-Orr (2008) wrote how she wished to thank him “for all he has given us, as an ancestor, a grandfather”. The Council of British Druid Orders has claimed that “Modern research...proves an unbroken genetic link between people today indigenous to Europe and our long dead”, adding, “It is time to remember who we are – the ancestors reborn” – a statement not immediately distinguishable from the voice of former British National Party leader Nick Griffin when he said, “The indigenous people of these islands... the people who’ve been here overwhelmingly for the last 17,000 years, we are the aborigines” (Spoilheap 2010). Such vague language has sometimes been used by heritage professionals. Occasionally one wonders if Pagan affiliations or sympathies of archaeologists or museum staff, not always made explicit, have influenced public debate, as is suggested in the paper here for Fundamental Christian belief. In the preparation for the Manchester exhibition noted above we saw a curious “public consultation”, in which seven archaeologists, nine museum curators, five “community representatives”, three “members of local archaeological societies” and 12 “Pagans” were invited to take part. As Spoilheap wrote at the time (2008), “The latter, who let’s face it, represent one of the smaller constituencies (archaeologists and curators stand for us all) should have PIA Volume 21 (2011), 20-22 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.372