Burial site find. Mixed emotions

[Gaudette]

A burial site has been found in our village which looks like it could be very important. However, it brings me mixed emotions as these were only discovered because the farm land is being developed for housing. I hate to see farmland used for housing and this particular site will be a great loss to the village. It's strange to think that I have driven passed this field thousands of times and all the time it was graveyard of possible royal significance.

For those interested the link is below.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-jewellery-linked-King-Anna-East-Anglia.html

 

[British Red]

Nasty for you. Over population leading to - usually boring - little houses built cheaply for profit. It destroys the feel of villages.

I also hate to see graves violated - however old they are. The graves should be left in peace.

 

[Toddy]

Comfortable, modern, economical to run, homes for people.

There has always been development over farmland; and nothing is static, everything evolves, changes.

1300 years ago that was a burial site, and then it's been farmland for how many centuries ? Now it'll be houses for a while.

Graves are such emotive subjects....the whole world is a grave. The problems only arise when instead of the soil leaching out the minerals and leaving only collagen which slowly breaks down with damp/soil contact, the soil is calcium rich and actually preserves the bones.
Then there are issues about what to do with them.
Think on it as the Frogmore of it's day.

Thing is though, now the bones have been excavated, have been recorded, the site and the remains investigated and analysed; what are they going to do with them ?
It's all very well to say they should be left in situ, but we live in country which does not pay for it's cultural heritage.
The builders are having to fund both that excavation, the analysis and interpretation, as well as deal with the delays and the issues of the site.
That's the reality of modern archaeology; excavation is mostly developer funded. It's actually to their credit in this instance that they have paid for the work because every archaeologist in the country knows of trashed sites where a big digger just goes in and smashes the lot.

The bones though, might end up in archival boxes in museum or University storage. Not a particularly dignified end. If they are reburied though...where ? those are not Christian graves. Those are pagan burials, and neo paganism is not the rites that were used when those people were originally buried.

No answers that will ever please everyone.

Mary

 

[santaman2000]

......The builders are having to fund both that excavation, the analysis and interpretation, as well as deal with the delays and the issues of the site.
That's the reality of modern archaeology; excavation is mostly developer funded....

The builders/developers may fund it temporarily but in the end they'll pass those costs down to the buyers of the homes.

 

[Toddy]

I'm sure they'll try; they aren't a charity, they are a business and have wages to pay too.

In the end if it makes no financial sense to the folks hoping to buy, they won't. There is only so much profit to be made on any site.

M

 

[santaman2000]

I'm sure they'll try; they aren't a charity, they are a business and have wages to pay too.

In the end if it makes no financial sense to the folks hoping to buy, they won't. There is only so much profit to be made on any site.

M

Exactly. And if there's no profit to be made, then the site wouldn't be developed.

 

[Toddy]

Not always. Sometimes when a site is cleared, and money already spent, then archaeology comes to light....as on this site.
Give up and lose all? or try to work around it, pay for excavation/recording and interpretation, and try to break even?

Not every business venture comes in successfully to profitable fruition.

I know of another site that this happened on, but it was a charity trying to erect a new respite home for disabled teenagers.
Give up ? or pay up and hope that they can afford it ?

Rarely black and white.

M

 

[santaman2000]

Not always. Sometimes when a site is cleared, and money already spent, then archaeology comes to light....as on this site.
Give up and lose all? or try to work around it, pay for excavation/recording and interpretation, and try to break even?

Not every business venture comes in successfully to profitable fruition.

I know of another site that this happened on, but it was a charity trying to erect a new respite home for disabled teenagers.
Give up ? or pay up and hope that they can afford it ?

Rarely black and white.

M

Of course there's the odd time the developer will have to simply cut their losses; be that by abandoning the project or continuing for a reduced profit or minor loss. But that said, it usually is black and white. If the balance tips the other way, the business will rarely make a profit and that will always lead to bankruptcy.

 

[santaman2000]

Here there would be an added problem. In many states the law requires there be a disclosure that the house sits on an old burial site. That would severely inhibit both the value and demand for the houses.

 

[feralpig]

I've worked on a few Persimmon homes sites, working for a contractor.
I can't think of one where a loss was made, but that was back when house prices were increasing at ridiculous rates, week on week.
The contractor, on the other hand, had to pay me, to move the kit from one end of the site to the other, then somewhere else, round and round in circles, so the bone diggers could dig under where we were set up. Seemed they always wanted to be where we were. And we were on piece rate......
We were far from the only ones having problems.
One day, they spent all day gently uncovering something, inch by painstaking inch, to find a mobile phone at the bottom of the hole.
They took a slightly different attitude after that.

 

[drliamski]

Here there would be an added problem. In many states the law requires there be a disclosure that the house sits on an old burial site. That would severely inhibit both the value and demand for the houses.

You have a lot more land though. Unlikely to have been used before!

 

[santaman2000]

You have a lot more land though. Unlikely to have been used before!

True. Add to that a probable cultural difference (as best I remember, a good ghost story enhanced property values there)

 

[Toddy]

No other western country pays so little towards it's cultural heritage as the UK does.

It means that in virtually every instance all of the burden for the excavation, etc., falls on the developer.
It's a rotten system, as feralpig says, the ' archaeology ' greatly interferes with the construction process....and it's not all black and white, because like robbing Peter to pay Paul, the business aims for an overall profit, sometimes you win, sometimes you might scrape an even draw, some you lose, and only if the balance is always in the loss does bankruptcy follow.... but the alternative is that the remains are literally trashed, and we all lose the connection to our ancestors, to our own heritage, to our history.

The presumption is in favour of preservation in situ. If it's known about in good time, fine, builders can build around it/ over it, and not through it.

Thousands of houses are built on old burial sites. Quietest neighbours you'll ever have, as they say. The graves can be left undisturbed and folks just use the land above.
However, when the building work does reveal graves, as it did at this site, then some kind of accomodation needs be made.

Personally I think we ought to build more on reclaimed brownfield sites, and leave the country's green lungs to thrive; but I'm neither a housebuilder nor now a housebuyer. Easy for me to say what they should do; might be a different matter if I had a growing family and really wanted out of a scheme, estate or inner city.

M

 

[Macaroon]

No other western country pays so little towards it's cultural heritage as the UK does.

It means that in virtually every instance all of the burden for the excavation, etc., falls on the developer.
It's a rotten system, as feralpig says, the ' archaeology ' greatly interferes with the construction process....and it's not all black and white, because like robbing Peter to pay Paul, the business aims for an overall profit, sometimes you win, sometimes you might scrape an even draw, some you lose, and only if the balance is always in the loss does bankruptcy follow.... but the alternative is that the remains are literally trashed, and we all lose the connection to our ancestors, to our own heritage, to our history.

The presumption is in favour of preservation in situ. If it's known about in good time, fine, builders can build around it/ over it, and not through it.

Thousands of houses are built on old burial sites. Quietest neighbours you'll ever have, as they say. The graves can be left undisturbed and folks just use the land above.
However, when the building work does reveal graves, as it did at this site, then some kind of accomodation needs be made.

Personally I think we ought to build more on reclaimed brownfield sites, and leave the country's green lungs to thrive; but I'm neither a housebuilder nor now a housebuyer. Easy for me to say what they should do; might be a different matter if I had a growing family and really wanted out of a scheme, estate or inner city.

M

That pretty much says it for me; it's a very short-sighted and dangerous thing to pay more attention to the respect of the long-dead than to the very real needs of many people's ambition to better there quality of life by
providing themselves and their families with a decent pleasant place to live.

 

[British Red]

That pretty much says it for me; it's a very short-sighted and dangerous thing to pay more attention to the respect of the long-dead than to the very real needs of many people's ambition to better there quality of life by
providing themselves and their families with a decent pleasant place to live.

This country already has plenty of houses - and its already vastly overpopulated. It cannot feed itself or produce its own fuel or building materials because things are so far out of balance. Paving over the farmland thats let and producing an even more unbalanced country isn't the answer - we've been trying that for decades. If population keeps growing and we keep building, when do we stop? When, in the words of the song, we've paved paradise?

 

[mountainm]

Plenty of empty houses in this country. Second homes clogging up villages forcing the indiginous youth out to urban housing elsewhere.

 

[santaman2000]

....the business aims for an overall profit, sometimes you win, sometimes you might scrape an even draw, some you lose, and only if the balance is always in the loss does bankruptcy follow........

We're partly in agreement here. Yes, business aims for an overall profit; but it doesn't take the losses to be always for bankruptcy to ensue. It only takes the losses to be greater than the profits.

 

[santaman2000]

Plenty of empty houses in this country. Second homes clogging up villages forcing the indiginous youth out to urban housing elsewhere.

There's a similar migration here as well (youth moving from country to city) But here it has more to do with available employment than housing.

 

[British Red]

Plenty of empty houses in this country. Second homes clogging up villages forcing the indiginous youth out to urban housing elsewhere.

Plenty of brownfield sites in cities (and suburban) areas too - plus lots of dilapidated buildings ripe for re-development.

 

[Toddy]

Plenty of brownfield sites in cities (and suburban) areas too - plus lots of dilapidated buildings ripe for re-development.

+1

Housing I don't feel quite so badly about, but new factory sprawls ? Oh those I can get truly incensed over.


M