22nd July 2005, 11:29 AM
At the risk of playing devils' advocate...
I assume that the CoE guidelines would apply to a project to excavate a burial ground. Most known burial grounds are of fairly recent date. I've never really understood osteoarchaeology for its own sake.
Most of the stuff I've read about Medieval and post med populations basically concludes that people had short lives, infant mortality was very high, though infants are not fully represented, and people suffered from diseases like syphillis and arthiritis, etc, etc.
It doesn't really seem to add much about to the sum of knowledge about how people lived in the past. Most of these conclusions can be reached with common sense.
Research excavations on sites that are more complex than JUST a cemetery should of course be encouraged. Any burials found in the course of investigating a more complex site should be fully recorded. To do otherwise would be to ignore an important aspect of a site.
Besides, I don't see why the CoE should even have the final say on things. Surely we should ask the Catholics about pre 1550's burials....
I assume that the CoE guidelines would apply to a project to excavate a burial ground. Most known burial grounds are of fairly recent date. I've never really understood osteoarchaeology for its own sake.
Most of the stuff I've read about Medieval and post med populations basically concludes that people had short lives, infant mortality was very high, though infants are not fully represented, and people suffered from diseases like syphillis and arthiritis, etc, etc.
It doesn't really seem to add much about to the sum of knowledge about how people lived in the past. Most of these conclusions can be reached with common sense.
Research excavations on sites that are more complex than JUST a cemetery should of course be encouraged. Any burials found in the course of investigating a more complex site should be fully recorded. To do otherwise would be to ignore an important aspect of a site.
Besides, I don't see why the CoE should even have the final say on things. Surely we should ask the Catholics about pre 1550's burials....