Grave news

[mesolithic viking]

News just out: Councils will be allowed to exhume bodies and re-use graves because of a shortage of cemetery space, ministers have said.

Officials will normally be able to re-use burial plots which are more than 100 years old after seeking permission from surviving relatives. But there could be a case for exhuming corpses after just 75 years "where available space is particularly short", said the Ministry of Justice. And families who object to a relative's grave being re-used will be allowed to defer the exhumation for "at least" a generation, justice minister Harriet Harman said.

The preferred way of re-using graves would be a "double decker"-style approach which involves lifting existing remains, deepening the grave and laying a new coffin on top.

Will it be us digging them up? Potentially a lot to be learnt here about taphonomy and post-depositional processes.

Careful, it might be hallucinogEeEe**33nnnn..

[Curator Kid]

This is a fascinating little insight into the weird and confused world of the Ministry of Justice. Were BAJRites aware that the Ministry is currently refusing to issue section 25 burial licences to archaeologists at the moment, pending a legal review? It seems they've decided that the Secretary of State doesn't have the power to authorise "retention, testing, or examination of the remains - or indeed any intervening act which is not directly related to removal or the subsequent reinterment or cremation of the remains".

Sorry Mesolithic Viking - you might well be interested in taphonomy and post-depositional processes, or a whole host of other scientific studies relating to human remains, but anything that doesn't involve immediate reburial or cremation of excavated human remains is now quite probably illegal.