22nd July 2005, 09:19 AM
The Church of England indicates that research excavation of unthreatened burial grounds is only acceptable if interments are more than 100 years old, and the proposed work is acceptable to the living close families of those who are buried, if known. Any such work should take place within an established research framework, and have a budget which provides for excavation costs, study of all recovered remains, and their reburial or deposition in a suitable institution. The guidelines the C of E recently brought out in conjunction with English Heritage suggest that such issues could stimulate debate and perhaps be usefully applied to dealing with Human remains from a wider range of contexts.
This seems to be a fairly reasonable approach. Having said that, the general attitude of the Church towards burials is often not helpful, and it's only very recently that they've begun to recognise the potential of burials to contain important archaeological information. Individual Churches are still one of the most intransigent developers I have to deal with as well, despite the guidelines. They are often very happy to disturb burials with no thought whatsoever if it is involved in (sometimes short term and dubious) improvements to Church facilities, but then will throw a whole host of theological argument around about the ethical validity of proposals for carefully monitored projects.
In general, this debate usually ends up being very subjective towards people's own beliefs and sensibilities. Personally, I'm not all that religious, so am fairly happy to treat Human remains with due respect, but ultimately as finds. The respect question is one to chew over too - given a choice, I like to think my remains might one day be excavated carefully by an atheist archaeologist and stored on a shelf, rather than machined out by a Chuurch-sponsored JCB and bunged in a presumably holy charnel pit.
It is nice not to have to argue about sampling though - no-one ever queries the "complete excavation" principle of excavting graves and proposes half-sectioning as acceptable practice.
This seems to be a fairly reasonable approach. Having said that, the general attitude of the Church towards burials is often not helpful, and it's only very recently that they've begun to recognise the potential of burials to contain important archaeological information. Individual Churches are still one of the most intransigent developers I have to deal with as well, despite the guidelines. They are often very happy to disturb burials with no thought whatsoever if it is involved in (sometimes short term and dubious) improvements to Church facilities, but then will throw a whole host of theological argument around about the ethical validity of proposals for carefully monitored projects.
In general, this debate usually ends up being very subjective towards people's own beliefs and sensibilities. Personally, I'm not all that religious, so am fairly happy to treat Human remains with due respect, but ultimately as finds. The respect question is one to chew over too - given a choice, I like to think my remains might one day be excavated carefully by an atheist archaeologist and stored on a shelf, rather than machined out by a Chuurch-sponsored JCB and bunged in a presumably holy charnel pit.
It is nice not to have to argue about sampling though - no-one ever queries the "complete excavation" principle of excavting graves and proposes half-sectioning as acceptable practice.