Reconstruction of the face of Neolithic man from Stonehenge

[Toddy]

......and how does 'relative' become someone with a rightful voice ? especially if not all of the 'relatives' agree.

Case in point; my g.g Uncle Angus died at Ypres. He was the one who said that he was an agriculturalist not a horticulturalist; he liked to eat what he grew ......and all I know otherwise of him was that he came home on leave and his kilt was full of lice, and his hose and shirts and boots were in tatters. His sisters knitted and sewed, and his Mother and Grandmother steamed his uniform to kill the lice and eggs, and then he went back to the front and (they think) he was gassed and died and was buried there.
His siblings had nearly 70 children between them, their children had children, and so on down to my children's generation. Living there are four generations .....who decides to bring him home ? The eldest family member believes he should lie where he is with his fellow soldiers, like his own friends and cousins do from the next WW.....yet the next generation down thought that he should be brought home and put into one of the family lairs.
I'm keeping well out of it.

Now multiply that across the Empire, then take it back a giant step or two, and look at the Roman empire, the Greek one.
On the whole I'm of the mind that where they were laid, if it's decent and not confrontational, let them lie in peace.

Just my tuppence ha'penny worth.
M

 

[Harvestman]

I wish you'd posted that sixty five minutes ago; I've just spent an hour searching about and reading a little on the subject and your sentence sums it up perfectly......................in five seconds!

Glad to be of assistance

 

[wingstoo]

......and how does 'relative' become someone with a rightful voice ? especially if not all of the 'relatives' agree.

Case in point; my g.g Uncle Angus died at Ypres. He was the one who said that he was an agriculturalist not a horticulturalist; he liked to eat what he grew ......and all I know otherwise of him was that he came home on leave and his kilt was full of lice, and his hose and shirts and boots were in tatters. His sisters knitted and sewed, and his Mother and Grandmother steamed his uniform to kill the lice and eggs, and then he went back to the front and (they think) he was gassed and died and was buried there.
His siblings had nearly 70 children between them, their children had children, and so on down to my children's generation. Living there are four generations .....who decides to bring him home ? The eldest family member believes he should lie where he is with his fellow soldiers, like his own friends and cousins do from the next WW.....yet the next generation down thought that he should be brought home and put into one of the family lairs.
I'm keeping well out of it.

Now multiply that across the Empire, then take it back a giant step or two, and look at the Roman empire, the Greek one.
On the whole I'm of the mind that where they were laid, if it's decent and not confrontational, let them lie in peace.

Just my tuppence ha'penny worth.
M

I was talking battlefields, not war cemeteries Mary.

When they find remains on battlefields long gone they try to establish who is left of the family and what their wishes are, they may wish for the remains to be placed in a War grave near to the rest of the soldiers buried there, or they may bring them home to a family plot...Many chose for the remains to be with his comrades, and they are invited to attend the burial.

 

[Toddy]

Ah, sorry, most modern battlefields are cleared where they can be. I know they didn't get everyone from WW1 or 11, but they did try.

In the UK sites like Culloden are declared War Graves and it's only in exceptional circumstances that any excavation may proceeed.
Doesn't always stop the metal detectorists and their shovels right enough or the picnic-ers

Basically those are not to be excavated unless something like erosion uncovers remains, or necessary building works need the ground to be cleared.....mind this could be something as simple as drainage issues.
Tony Pollard was granted special permission to work on Culloden because of the need to upgrade the heritage centre simply because of pressure of numbers.

Unmarked, and not known with any certainty, burials on wartime sites are sometimes excavated so that the remains may be given 'proper' burial not granted to the casualties at the time. Trench collapses, flooded and infilled foxholes, for instance. Similarly with mass graves, prisoner of war graves, conflicts such as the Serbian ones and wrecked aircraft and ships.

Basically there is an attempt at identifying the individuals and giving them a culturally relevant and appropriate last resting place. That the excavation gives insight and knowledge in the process, is not considered to be a insult or indignity.

cheers,
M

 

[British Red]

Ah, sorry, most modern battlefields are cleared where they can be. I know they didn't get everyone from WW1 or 11, but they did try.

In the UK sites like Culloden are declared War Graves and it's only in exceptional circumstances that any excavation may proceeed.
Doesn't always stop the metal detectorists and their shovels right enough or the picnic-ers

Basically those are not to be excavated unless something like erosion uncovers remains, or necessary building works need the ground to be cleared.....mind this could be something as simple as drainage issues.
Tony Pollard was granted special permission to work on Culloden because of the need to upgrade the heritage centre simply because of pressure of numbers.

Unmarked, and not known with any certainty, burials on wartime sites are sometimes excavated so that the remains may be given 'proper' burial not granted to the casualties at the time. Trench collapses, flooded and infilled foxholes, for instance. Similarly with mass graves, prisoner of war graves, conflicts such as the Serbian ones and wrecked aircraft and ships.

Basically there is an attempt at identifying the individuals and giving them a culturally relevant and appropriate last resting place. That the excavation gives insight and knowledge in the process, is not considered to be a insult or indignity.

cheers,
M

That seems not only acceptable but laudable to me - indeed sensitive to what I suspect the victims and their families would wish. An entirely separate matter (in my view) to opening a grave site.

 

[wingstoo]

I guess it depends on people considering what is a grave. Where a person falls and is in one way or another buried is often said to be a grave, a sunken ship from war activity is often later marked as a grave...

Strange how it seems OK to remove remains from one grave to place in another purely for aesthetic reasons but not OK to take one from another to find out who that person was and to bring history to life again...Nowt so strange as folk...

 

[Toddy]

I suppose the difference is the ritual deposition of the individual within a culturally appropriate (acceptable) site.

Who was the fellow who wrote about his wanderings and the stone age crafts he learned and practiced? He had cancer, fought it off, and then it came back again and the last time it wasn't going to be stopped. He took himself off into the forest, put his back agin a tree, and he died there; where he wanted to, in his own peace.
I don't think his body was left there, though I personally feel that it really should have been. Our culture doesn't do that though.
Storm ? no, not that.....someone'll mind who I mean.

M

 

[British Red]

[h=2]grave[/h]Pronunciation: /greɪv/

[h=3]noun[/h]a hole dug in the ground to receive a coffin or corpse, typically marked by a stone or mound: the coffin was lowered into the grave

I think it is fair to say that a grave is an intentional burial site

A war grave is a burial place for members of the armed forces or civilians who died during military campaigns or operations. The term does not only apply to graves: ships sunk during wartime are often considered to be war graves, as are military aircraft that crash into water; this is particularly true if crewmen perished inside the vehicle.

War graves are not the same thing as battlefields. To me there is an enormous difference between giving a proper burial to someone who did not have one and violating the last resting place of a person laid to rest. I know you belive

Cemeteries would get so big we wouldn't be able to move for them, give 'em 100 years then start again

This would mean that next year we would start pulling down the headstones of WWI cemeteries - I'm just not okay with that - and I suspect many others would not be.

 

[boatman]

If barrows were not excavated,partially nowadays, would anybody be happy to wallow in the ignorance of thinking that they were the graves of hierarchies of druids etc.? Real knowledge is a good and it is a good that trumps any sanctity nonsense, especially as we haven't the faintest idea what they they thought about such matters in the original period.

 

[Toddy]

We're not to discuss religion on the forum....but the reason that his own generation felt he should lie where he was, was simply that they believed that he'd already taken the low road home anyway. The flesh is mortal, the spirit endures kind of thing. Many felt the same way. The mortal remains for most humans are not preserved for eternity, right enough the Egytians saw it differently.....but ye gods the sheer number of things they mummified ! Most mummies ended up ground up and sold as natron to medieval physicians......ritual cannibalism I suppose, if unwittingly by their patients.

It is said often nowadays that the funeral is for the living, not the dead. Similarly many feel that the marking of a grave with more than a simple mound is for those who do not believe in a specific afterlife. Cremation is very acceptable nowadays, and it was in the past too.
Excavations at Vergina, and the tombs of the Macedonian royalty, led to the reconstruction of the bone material recovered. At the time it was claimed that the individuals were of Alexander the Great's family, and they rebuilt the cremated skull of his father Philip......then subsequent interpretations seem to demonstrate that it wasn't Philip but one of his half brothers.

Cremated bones; surprising isn't it that even cremated bones can give us so much information? if they are found in situ that is.
Virtually all of the other Macedonian tombs at Vergina had already been looted, so all that they held, both of the individual and the knowledge that could have been gained, has been lost.

http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/macedon/

Thousands of years old.....how long is too long ? The entire world is a gravesite of some kind or other.

Personally I hate dealing with bones. Dry bones are often dusty, crumbly, and you can smell them, feel the dust. If I can smell it, I'm ingesting it, breathing it in.....yeah I lost breakfast and lunch. I still handled them with respect. Packed them carefully away and know that if they're reburied then the origins as far as I know them are with their records.
Not much more I could do to be honest; they were excavated long before ppg16. The last ones I dealt with are stored away in archival boxes beside the cinerary urns full of cremated bones of our bronze age ancestors also found in this area. Two thousand years seperate them, or about 15cms, depending on your point of view.

M

 

[Jared]

I know one of the Mods who looks very like him

http://ntpressoffice.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/stonhenge-visitor-centre/

cheers,
M

Was thinking more Barry Gibb of Bee Gees

 

[Toddy]

Hmmmm I don't think he's quite that pretty

M

 

[wingstoo]

Maybe you are right Hugh, after all what a great way to show how crazy it is for us to send our fittest and youngest away to foreign lands to die...

The general rule on burial grounds is, I believe, that after 100 years of the last person being interred there is likely to be no relatives alive who knew them and who still visits the grave.

What is sacred to some though is not to others it is offensive...

As this video shows. (No doubt it will be removed though...If it is thought to be too offensive to members)

[video=facebook;10200324630614402]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200324630614402[/video]

 

[wingstoo]

Well that link didn't work...

Maybe this one will

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200324630614402

I don't see the carefully excavation of ancient remains a violation, after all a lot of those back then thought they were going to be born again at the end of their journey in the after life, hence being buried with their important things... Which is what we have done, the reconstruction of the remains has given him a new life.

 

[John Fenna]

I am ambivalent about digging up graves of any sort - but "rescue archaeology" seems a better alternative to smashing the graves and building over them...
As to Mod lookalikes...
?

 

[Wayland]

I object less to the archaeology of ancient graves than I do to the presumption in some cases that the remains should be re-interred with a "Proper Christian" (insert whichever modern cult you prefer) burial.

I'd come back and haunt the beggars that did that to me if I could.

 

[northumbrian]

spot on mate !

 

[Goatboy]

It does allow us a window into a hidden world that we have no other way of knowing about. It does bring to light the fate of the remains of various indigenous tribes from around the world who's remains were exhumed and brought to reside in our museums. We see that some of their ancestors like the American Indians and the Maori who have been upset and lobbied for the remains return.

It's a difficult one which I morally struggle with due to my interest in archaeology. I want to learn of what went before but feel a link to them and sometimes feel bad that a body that has lain in the earth for so long has it's rest disturbed, we don't necessarily know if we are disturbing their peace depending on what we believe about their afterlife. My scientific side wants to know and treat them with respect (which I believe most excavators do) but my spiritual side wants them to be left alone. I would object to a modern religious re-internment though; that's just wrong. Ötzi is a famous point in note, fascinating study of his remains and kit, but is it right to be so invasive. Though the means of his death seem to point to the fact that he didn't have a very respectful end anyway.

 

[boatman]

Not sure if I mention that we met some presumed Romano-Britons when some fifth century human remains were being at a site we were displaying LH at. Extremely interesting and the skeletons were laid out decently and reburied without ritual although we couldn't resist adding a few flowers. This is by archaeologists which I contrast with the black plastic bags of the remains of monks of, I think Malmsbury Abbey, seen on television with a reburial managed by the C of E.

 

[mr dazzler]

Its Michael Barrymore isnt it....?

....I'll get my coat