Pagans for Archaeology

Cultural continuity?

2012-01-28T03:24:00.000-08:00

People from other religions, and occasionally archaeologists, refer to contemporary Pagans as "neopagans". I personally find this condescending. I have outlined the reasons for this before, in a blogpost entitled "Stop calling us NeoPagans".

I think the reason "neopagan" bothers me so much is (1) the other terms that the prefix "neo"appears in; (2) the fact that no-one ever refers to Protestants and the like as "Neo-Christians"; (3) it implies a lack of authenticity - why can't people be Pagans (as long as we don't claim to be direct heirs of ancient pagans, because there are both similarities and differences); (4) it's usually said in a snidey way.

I am not saying that there is cultural continuity between contemporary Pagans and ancient "pagans" (who did not self-identify as pagan - the term was applied to them by the early Christians).

The only connection between contemporary Paganism and ancient polytheisms is that we honour the same deities. The philosophical basis of the Pagan revival is different - even in the case of reconstructionist Paganisms. Our philosophical basis is either reconnecting with Nature, or recovering the lost wisdom of the past. The philosophical basis of much of ancient polytheism was mainly propitiating the deities. Of course there must have been those who participated in the rituals out of love of the deities, and because they wanted to connect with the world-soul, but these were probably in the minority (as they sadly are today in most religions).

The rituals of ancient polytheisms, and the reasons behind them, are largely lost to us. What understanding of death did the Iron Age Celts have? We simply don't know, because they didn't write it down. Nor do we know with what rituals they disposed of their dead, even if we can see the results. Our knowledge of the Iron Age priesthood known as the druids comes mainly from the propagandist writings of Julius Caesar, as Ronald Hutton points out in his excellent book The Druids. (Presumably also in Blood and Mistletoe, but I haven't read that yet.)

Information about what the Saxon and Norse rituals were like is considerably better, and so Heathen reconstructionists have far more hope of producing something accurate.

Obviously there is also no unbroken line of initiatory descent from ancient polytheisms (unless you trace it through the Christian church, ironically enough). And the genetic link between contemporary Pagans and ancient pagans is shared by every other inhabitant of the British Isles.

So contemporary Pagans cannot claim exclusive jurisdiction over sacred sites or human remains, because everyone is the heir of the ancient past. But when someone wants to desecrate a sacred site (as when some Christians wanted to place a rock with Alpha and Omega carved on it in the middle of Maybury Henge), then we should have a voice alongside others who would want to prevent such a thing from happening.

Guardian article about human remains

2011-11-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Liz Williams, science fiction author and druid, has written an article in The Guardian Comment is free entitled How to honour the ancient dead: The pagan debate about the treatment of ancient remains sheds light on our own beliefs as well as those of the past.It is an excellent article and well worth a read. I would like to add that Pagans for Archaeology is entirely opposed to the reburial of British human remains (although some of our membership may be undecided, that is our original founding position statement, for reasons outlined previously).Anyway, well done Liz, good article. The comments are interesting too, albeit sprinkled with the usual militant atheists dismissing all beliefs as "woo". There are some good comments from archaeologists and also a discussion about the repatriation of remains from other countries (such as Australia, New Zealand and the Americas).Native American and indigenous Australasian remains are much more recent, and often come from named individuals with living relatives. They were often collected under colonial rule, and the people who want them back generally haven't changed their culture that much, so there is cultural and genetic continuity. In the case of the much older British human remains, there is no cultural continuity between them and contemporary Pagans, and everyone in Britain (including the archaeologists) has genetic continuity from them. Therefore I think the repatriation of these remains is an entirely different issue, which should be decided by the indigenous groups concerned.

museum accessibility

2011-08-17T05:14:00.000-07:00

Tiffany Jenkins has just reviewed the redevelopment of the Museum of Scotland. I found it fascinating that the kids she went with noticed that the museum had been dumbed down, and that she had great difficulty finding out where a large spider-crab that was on display came from and how big it was - simple facts that you would expect to appear in its caption. Also, the museum has introduced those awful audio-guides, which I personally dislike intensely.

This reminded me of another issue with museums that I identified about five years ago, and even wrote to curators' mailing lists about.

Museum displays frequently have poor usability and accessibility, namely the way they label their exhibits. Frequently there is a number next to the object, and this refers to a panel with explanatory text. This is OK for small objects where there is no room to add captions next to the objects, but frequently it is employed for large objects, where the aesthetic value of the object is often seen as more important than its meaning.

Unfortunately this makes it very difficult for people with dyslexia to enjoy the exhibition, because by the time they have transferred their gaze from the exhibit to the interpretation panel, they have forgotten the number, and have to go back again. I myself am not dyslexic but frequently have this problem anyway! In one museum we visited, there was a costume exhibition, and the distance between the numbers and the explanatory text was so great that a lady who was both short- and long-sighted had to change her glasses each time.

The solution is simply to place a short explanatory caption next to the object (e.g. 14th C English spoon), and a longer piece giving the context below or beside the display case.

Medieval graffiti website

2011-05-26T04:28:00.000-07:00

The Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey is pleased to announce that their website is now fully updated and revised. The new site now contains the first elements of a visual catalogue that showcases some of the more interesting and unusual discoveries made by the project. It is currently organised by parish but, as the site expands, we hope to make all the information searchable by subject as well as by site. The new site also contains a link to the new Medieval Graffiti twitter feed - which allows you to learn about new discoveries as they are made. Real-time church archaeology.

Some churches have apotropaic marks and other esoteric graffiti, which whilst not actually Pagan, derives from the pagan worldview which the Christian order inherited. To quote Ronald Hutton:

medieval and early modern Europeans constructed their world-picture out of materials taken from both Christianity and ancient paganism, making a mixture of both which they believed to be a form of Christianity.

PfA and HAD

2011-05-24T01:45:00.000-07:00

A comment from "Anonymous" appeared in the comments following Caroline Tully's recent interview with Ronald Hutton.

It alleged that Ronald Hutton is "behind" Pagans for Archaeology. He's not some eminence grise, you know. Ronald Hutton is not associated with Pagans for Archaeology; I asked him to be a patron and he gracefully declined, on two grounds: (1) to preserve his neutrality; (2) because it would imply that he endorses everything we do (whether he does or not). I founded Pagans for Archaeology, and have asked two Pagans who are interested in archaeology to help me run the Facebook group.

Anonymous further alleges that PfA is seeking to undermine HAD. Far from it; we have cordial relations with HAD, and I regard HAD as the moderates in the reburial debate, as they are only calling for reburial of some remains, not all remains, and are building dialogue with the heritage, archaeology and museum sector. I have had cordial conversations with Emma Restall-Orr on the subject of reburial, and interviewed her on the Pagans for Archaeology blog. The extremists in the reburial debate are CoBDO (West), who want to rebury all remains.

Pagans for Archaeology represents those Pagans who do not agree with reburial, and who are interested in archaeology, and want to improve relations with the heritage, museum and archaeology sector.

Faith heritage trails

2011-05-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

Many different faiths and cultures have made a mark on Britain, and this should be celebrated. Today I visited the amazing Hindu mandir in Neasden, which was very beautiful. But there are many places associated with different faiths.

The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies is gathering a Hindu archive which explores Hindu influence in Britain and beyond.

Hindu heritage sites include The Maharajah's Well in Berkhire, the tomb of Rammohun Roy in Bristol and the Chattri near Brighton (which is dedicated to Sikh and Hindu soldiers who were cremated there).

The first Indian restaurant in England was opened in 1810 by Sake Dean Mohamed. The oldest surviving Indian restaurant, Veeraswamy, was opened in 1926.

Some information on Muslim heritage, including blue plaques and old mosques, can be found on the British Muslim heritage site. A history of Muslim science is on the Muslim Heritage website.

Sikh heritage in Britain is celebrated on the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail website.

The BBC has some information on Buddhism in Britain.

The Institute of Jainology has a list of Jain temples in the UK.

Jewish heritage can be explored on the Jewish trails website.

Inspired by the Jewish trails site, I also started a Pagan trails website, which needs contributions.

There's a Unitarian heritage trail in London. Also the Humanist Heritage website mentions several Unitarian sites connected with the early history of Humanism. The Unitarian Communications blog has now gathered a list of Unitarian heritage websites.

Aggregates Levy will no longer fund archaeology & environment

2011-03-17T00:36:00.000-07:00

DEFRA have just announced that the Aggregates Levy, which was previously used (in part) to fund rescue archaeology and environmental projects, will now go straight to the Treasury and not be used to restore the environment.

Damian Carrington writes in The Guardian environment blog:

Having united the Socialist Workers Party with the National Trust, the UK's department for environment (Defra) has pulled off another unlikely pairing: the Mineral Products Association (MPA) and the Wildlife Trusts.

The issue is the pocketing by the Treasury of about £20m a year in taxes from the aggregates industry – gravel and sand quarrying – that had until now been spent on conservation schemes.
"I can't understand why the government has cut this funding. The money comes from a tax that encourages industry to reduce the amount of quarrying, and the industry is happy to see this money used to put something back, for nature and people," Jeremy Biggs told me.

He is director of Pond Conservation, which, along with the RSPB and others, has joined the campaign to reverse the cut. "Cutting the aggregates fund will reduce the quality of habitat restoration after quarries are worked out, and seems unbelievably short-sighted and counter-productive."

Yes indeed, it's quite an achievement to have united such disparate bodies.

And a commenter on his blog, Xemxija, writes:

A small part of the Aggregates Levy was given to English Heritage to distribute in order to fund excavations when unexpected finds were made in quarries, and to analyse and disseminate the results of these excavations.

In general the quarry companies have been quite accepting of the 'polluter pays' idea - that if they are destroying natural environments and archaeological remains then they must make a contribution towards recording the archaeology and restoring the landscape (although not surprisingly, as the effects of the credit crunch have bitten deeper, they have become less and less happy).

It is extraordinarily grasping of the government to just keep the small part of the Aggregates Levy which went to English Heritage and to English Nature. It transforms the Levy from compensation for damage caused to a simple tax.

And it makes it very clear to the quarry companies that despite what the government says, it places it very little value on our environment and heritage.

What you can do: write to DEFRA and to your MP, pointing out that the Aggregates Levy was a valuable contribution to the environment and to rescue archaeology; that it was only a small proportion of the total Aggregates Levy; and that it is an expression of the principle that the polluter pays to clean up after themselves.

We've broken the 4000 barrier!

2011-03-09T06:18:00.000-08:00

Facebook stats for this week:

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Write to your MP

2011-02-07T02:49:00.000-08:00

Please write to your MP and to Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Justice to complain about the 2008 reburial legislation. Here is a sample letter - please add your own thoughts:

I am writing in support of the letter from forty professors of archaeology regarding the 2008 reburial legislation in The Guardian on 4 February 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/04/reburial-requirement-impedes-archaeology?intcmp=239

I am a member of an organisation called Pagans for Archaeology. We're Pagans who love archaeology and believe that it has contributed hugely to our knowledge of our ancestors and the religions of the past. Without archaeology, people would have little or no understanding of the peoples of the past. Pagans for Archaeology has more members than any other group purporting to represent Pagans on the issue of human remains (we currently have 3855 members).

We are opposed to the reburial of ancient human remains, and want them to be preserved so that the memory of the ancestors can be perpetuated and rescued from oblivion, and the remains can be studied scientifically for the benefit of everyone. We want human remains to be treated with respect, but respect does not automatically mean reburial. Respect should mean memory, which involves recovering the stories of past people. The British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology has a code of practice for handling and storing human remains, which is very respectful.

I would support a return to the simple, well-tried system practised up to 2008 which permitted the retention, study, curation and display of excavated remains as appropriate.

Yours sincerely
[Your name]
Member of Pagans for Archaeology

You can find contact details for your MP and Kenneth Clarke at WriteToThem.com (don't paste an identical copy of my sample letter into Write To Them, as they block identical emails).

Update
ASDS Archaeologists and the 1857 Burial Act
This website provides a background document, a letter to archaeologists and a template and instructions that can be used to send a letter to Ken Clarke. Please send your support for the campaign against the two-year reburial legislation to the government. Please also cc or forward your email to BurialLaw@uclan.ac.uk as ASDS are attempting to document the whole thing.

Dem bones not gonna walk around

2011-02-07T01:26:00.000-08:00

An article in The Guardian on Friday reports that 40 archaeology professors have written to Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, to complain about the new reburial legislation which requires human remains to be reburied after two years:

Human remains from Stonehenge and other ancient settlements will be reburied and lost to science under legislation that threatens to cripple research into the history of humans in Britain, a group of leading archaeologists says today.

In a letter addressed to the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, and printed in the Guardian today, 40 archaeology professors write of their "deep and widespread concern" about the issue.

The dispute centres on legislation introduced by the Ministry of Justice in 2008 which requires all human remains excavated at digs in England and Wales to be reburied within two years, regardless of their age. The decision, which amounts to a reinterpretation of law previously administered by the Home Office, means scientists have too little time to study bones and other human remains of national and cultural significance, the academics say.

"Your current requirement that all archaeologically excavated human remains should be reburied, whether after a standard period of two years or a further special extension, is contrary to fundamental principles of archaeological and scientific research and of museum practice," they write. Signatories include Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London; Stephen Shennan, director of University College London's archaeology institute; and Helena Hamerow, head of archaeology at Oxford University.

Read more: Legislation forces archaeologists to rebury finds

Guardian (UK), Friday 4 February 2011

Ian Sample, science correspondent
(what a great name for a science journalist!)

Hat-tip to Caroline Tully

Modern Answers to Ancient Mysteries

2011-01-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

York Archaeological Trust presents a one-day conference:
Modern Answers to Ancient Mysteries

Saturday 19th February 2011
Fountains Lecture Theatre - York St John University

To complement the opening of the new galleries at JORVIK in 2011 - investigating new ideas about some of the objects unearthed in the Coppergate excavations - this conference brings together speakers from across Europe to reveal their most recent archaeological research on an intriguing range of subjects, from prehistory to the 19th century.

Pre-booking essential. For more details call 01904 615505. Or book
online

Past Horizons

2010-11-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

Past Horizons has just launched their new look website packed full of articles, news stories, conference announcements and Viewpoints.

The latest news: Language and Toolmaking Evolved Together

The Latest Article: Ethnoarchaeology in Australia

The Latest Viewpoints:

More apotropaic marks

2010-08-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

A commenter on my one of previous posts about apotropaic marks left a link to his photos of daisy wheels and other inscribed circles on Flickr. There are lots of them from many different places. There are also several Flickr groups devoted to similar marks.

1970s excavation published

2010-08-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

It's good to see old excavations being published. The PfA blog has deplored the existence of grey literature previously, so it's great to see that someone is doing something about it.

Internet Archaeology is pleased to announce the publication of "Iron Age Settlement at Blackstone, Worcestershire: Excavations 1972, 1973, and 1977" by Derek Hurst, Alan Hunt and Peter Davenport et al.

Excavations in the 1970s at Blackstone found a rectangular double-ditched Iron Age enclosure dated from the 2nd century into the 1st century BC. The initial structural analysis has been largely retained in this updated report and accompanied by a separate modern commentary, allied with the updated finds and environmental reporting, and overall discussion.

Internet Archaeology thanks and acknowledges English Heritage for the publication grant that has enabled us to make this article Open Access.

The Archaeology Data Service also has an archive of grey literature.

A lot of grey literature is generated by commercial archaeology on sites that are being excavated before construction takes place. The reports are only stored at county archaeology units, so researchers have to travel to get hold of them, according to an article by Matt Ford in Nature.

Interview with Mike Parker-Pearson

2010-07-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

Mike Parker-Pearson is co-director of the Riverside Project. He is is a Professor of Archaeology. He is an internationally renowned expert in the archaeology of death and also specialises in the later prehistory of Britain and Northern Europe and the archaeology of Madagascar and the western Indian Ocean. He has published 14 books and over 100 academic papers, on topics that range from architecture, food and warfare to ethnoarchaeology, archaeological theory and heritage management. He has worked on archaeological excavations in Britain, Denmark, Easter Island, Germany, Greece, Madagascar, Syria and the United States, and currently directs field projects in the Outer Hebrides, Madagascar and the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

Mike was voted 'Archaeologist of the Year' for 2010. His Stonehenge Riverside Project also received the award of 'Archaeological Research Project of the Year' for 2010, after his team discovered 'Bluestonehenge', the remains of a second stone circle close to Stonehenge in 2009.

He is currently seeking an extension of the period allowed for the study of the cremated remains found in the Aubrey Holes, which were first excavated in the 1920s.

PfA: What is your role in the Riverside Project?

MPP: I'm a co-director with five others. I basically started us off and persuaded the others to join in, and
I'm in overall charge of all the admin (I carry the can for the grants, the permissions, etc etc) but I don't dictate the research results, obviously! We spend a lot of time discussing and arguing about interpretations and the next step. It's been really useful doing it this way because it's easier to see which interpretations fit the evidence best and avoid going down blind alleys; it stops any one of us following their pet theory without looking at all angles. Lots of other archaeologists thought we were mad to try and work in such a big team - they predicted we'd fight and fall out - but it's been a fantastic way of running a big project.

PfA: What got you interested in archaeology?

MPP: Looking for fossils and other finds in the gravel on my dad's drive when I was four years old. When I was six, I got out a library book called Fun With Archaeology - it's been my aim in life ever since.

PfA: Do you feel a kinship for the people of the past?

MPP: Most of the time "no", because they were so different to us in many ways, really quite strange. But some things transcend time and place, and give a sense of connection, like finger-prints on a pot or the face of a bog body, or the death of the Iceman.

PfA: What can human remains tell us about the people of the past?

MPP: The answer to this question changes virtually by the year. When I was younger, advances were being made in osteological identification of age, sex, trauma and disease. Now we're finding out about diet, mobility, migration, and DNA - these are all techniques that were unimaginable even 20 years ago.

PfA: What is the scientific and/or social value of retaining human remains for study?

MPP: Because our scientific capabilities are changing so fast, there is no point at which anyone can say "that's done, the research on those remains is finished". For example, with the Aubrey Hole cremated remains we have just found that there is a brand-new technique of sex identification from the size and shape of
ear-holes (the petrous bone) which has been developed just in time for us to use. No-one ever knows what the future will bring - think of the antiquarian barrow-diggers who didn't keep the Bronze Age skeletons because they couldn't imagine any reason to do so.

PfA: Why is it important that the remains from the Aubrey Holes are studied? What can we learn?

MPP: Who are these people who were buried at Stonehenge? What more interesting question could there be? It's an extraordinary place and we want to find out as much as we can about it, its builders and its users. By studying the remains of the people buried there, we try to find out as much as we can about their lives and the society they lived in. This was the period between the long barrows and the round barrows and we have very few remains at all dating to this period (3000-2500 BC). What happened to most of the dead and why were these people special?

PfA: Why do you need the time allowed to study them to be extended?

Because working with fragments of cremated bone just takes ages. There are over 50,000 pieces of bone and they are all mixed up - we don't know which individual is which out of the 60 deposits of bones that were found by Col. Hawley in the 1920s. It is the most complicated jigsaw puzzle you could imagine. These people of Stonehenge are worth our spending time with them. I can't bear the idea of this being rushed. I'm not sure people realise just how long the post-excavation phase of any project takes. It's normal for it to take years to get all the specialist analyses queued up and completed. For example, the Amesbury Archer was excavated in 2002 and the report is still not published. Money and time are always hard to find.

PfA: What can the Aubrey Holes remains and the Riverside Project tell us about the wider Stonehenge landscape and the uses to which the complex of monuments were put?

This is a huge question! Until we started, it was thought that Stonehenge's period of use as a cemetery was only a very short-lived part of the monument's life. The project's preliminary results indicate dates for cremation burial as early as its construction (3000 BC) and possibly as late as 2300 BC. What we really need to know from the radiocarbon dates is what that full span of use as a cremation cemetery was and how the numbers of individuals being buried varied through time - was Stonehenge the burial place for an increasing number of people, or were most of the people found here buried when the monument was
first built? The contrast with Durrington Walls is stark - there we have found only three loose human bones amongst 80,000 animal bones. Durrington Walls was a place for the living, Stonehenge is full of the dead. National Geographic, who funded some of the excavations, sent a children's book author to write
about the project - his book is called If Stones Could Speak (by Marc Aronson) and funnily enough, it's currently the only up-to-date book on Stonehenge, its chronology and landscape. Quite cheap on Amazon.

PfA: What can the remains tell us about the lives of the individuals who were cremated and placed in the Aubrey Holes?

By the end of the research, we are hoping to know the distribution by sex (how many men, how many women) and age (adults and children). That in itself is going to reveal something about how this society worked. Preliminary findings indicate that most of the people buried here were men, with few women or
children. These preliminary identifications from pieces of skull and pelvis, though, will need to be checked against the new method using the petrous bone. We can find out about trauma and disease. So far, there are few signs of ill-health other than some osteoarthritis, and one person had a benign tumour. This work is much more difficult when the osteologist is working on fragments of cremated bone rather than with a complete skeleton. DNA and strontium isotope analysis (which reveals where people lived) are not possible using
current methods - but who knows what future researchers may be able to do.

PfA: What do you think about the way human remains are displayed in museums?

I haven't got a problem with this. It's part of my culture. Obviously, all curators treat human remains with respect - that's part of the culture, too. The public at large are fascinated by human remains - we all want to know about death, as it's about the only thing we all have in common, pharaohs, bog bodies, you and me. It's the big mystery and I think it helps to come face to face with it sometimes, particularly as our cultural practices are now so coy surrounding death and dead bodies. We seem to pretend the bodies of the dead today are an unmentionable problem, and should be swept away out of sight by 'professionals'. I don't think that's healthy. Because one understands one's personal connection to the remains of another human being, I think human
remains really make people aware of the depth of time of human history.

PfA: Do you think there is a role for Pagans in archaeology? For instance, in describing the dynamics of ritual and how Pagans engage with sites.

Yes. The more people who show an interest in our past and archaeology, the better. Pagans and the way they engage with the prehistoric past could be a real eye-opener for people of other beliefs (or none), as it's one of the ways of showing how much these places matter to our society.

PfA: Do you think the heritage sector should engage with Pagans?

Difficult, because some Pagans seem to me to be very antagonistic to other people's point of view. Some of them even seem to think that they have a more powerful claim to 'ownership' of the past and our ancestors than the rest of us.

But I think that's a problem with all religious belief systems - the danger of thinking only you are right, and everyone else is totally wrong (People's Front of Judea and all that!).

PfA: Many thanks for a fascinating insight into the state of current osteoarchaeology, and the research findings of the Riverside Project. We believe that only a small minority of Pagans think they have a claim to 'ownership' of the past and our ancestors. Indeed, the vast majority of Pagans are very tolerant of other belief-systems, including atheism, secular humanism, etc. The huge numbers of fans and members of Pagans for Archaeology attests to the numbers of Pagans who don't believe they have a special claim on human remains, and who are interested in science and archaeology.

Data from cremated bone

2010-07-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how you extracted data from cremated bone, or indeed whether you could get the same kind of information from cremated bone that you can get from whole skeletons. It turns out that you can find out a surprising amount. The fact that you can determine the whole diet of the cremated individual ate means that you can find out a lot about the environment where they lived.

Here is some information on radiocarbon dating, prepared by English Heritage's radiocarbon advisor.

About 10 years ago, a new method for the radiocarbon dating of cremated bone was proposed by a research group at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Lanting et al 2001). This followed some work on dating the carbonate fraction of unburnt bone from the Sahara by a group based in Lyon (Saliège et al 1998). This method works by dating the structural carbonate fraction of bone. The carbon in this fraction derives from the whole diet of the dated individual (not just the protein component that dominates the carbon in the collagen fraction), and so is much less susceptable to dietary offsets than dates on collagen. Also structural carbonate often survives in situations (such as in cremations) where collagen diagenesis makes this fraction unsuitable for radiocarbon dating.

Unfortunately, early attempts to date the carbonate fraction of unburnt bone (largely in the 1960s) gave dates that were anomalously young because the bone carbonate exchanges with humic acids in the burial environment. Consequently only in special, very dry environments, such as in the Sahara did bone carbonate give accurate radiocarbon ages. The major advance of the new method was to isolate the part of the structural carbonate in cremated bone that has had its crystalline structure altered by the cremation process in such a way as it is no longer contaminated by the burial environment (van Strydonck et al 2005). So, when dating cremated bone we are dating the time when the individual died, but the sample becomes datable because of the cremation process itself. This is why we need a 2-4g from a single piece of white, calcined bone. The crystalline structure in less calcined material has been insufficiently altered for accurate dating. Because this method was new, and was dating a sample type which had previously proved extremely problematic, it underwent extensive testing in the early 2000s in radiocarbon laboratories in many countries (eg De Mulder et al 2004; Naysmith et al 2007). It has been shown to produce accurate radiocarbon dates routinely and has now been adopted as a standard technique worldwide.

Lanting, J N, Aerts-Bijma, A T, and van der Plicht, J, 2001 Dating of cremated bones, Radiocarbon, 43, 249-54

Naysmith, P, Scott, E M, Cook, G T, Heinemeier, J, van der Plicht, J, Van Strydonck, M, Bronk Ramsey, C, Grootes, P M, and Freeman, S P H T, 2007 A cremated bone inter-comparison study, Radiocarbon, 49, 403-8

Saliège, J-F, Person, A, and Paris, F, 1998 Datation du carbonate-hydroxylapatite d'ossements Holocènes du Sahel (Mali, Mauritanie, Niger), Pré-actes du 3ème Congrès International 14C et Archéologie, Lyon 1998, 172-3

van Strydonck, M, Boudin, M, Hoefens, M, and de Mulder, G, 2005 14C-dating of cremated bones-why does it work?, Lunula, 13, 3-10

De Mulder, G, van Strydonck, M, and Boudin, M, 2004 14C-dateringen op gecremeerde menselijk botten uit de urnenvelden te Velzeke (O.-Vl.), Lunula, 12, 51-58

Archaeology of the Internet

2010-07-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

The Wayback Machine allows you to access dead websites after they have gone (though of course they won't be updated any more).

Some time back, I posted a humorous item about the internet archaeologists of the near future discovering the ruins of the Friendster civilisation, complete with abandoned profiles. The same could have been said of Geocities.

So, could you have an archaeology of the internet? How would you go about it? I guess you could chart the rise and fall of various websites, and how they over-reached themselves in the quest for users (Geocities), or added too many new features (Facebook). This process might be analogous to the rise and fall of empires (Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian...)

Free archaeology lectures

2010-06-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Rhind Lectures - "Design vs Dogma: Reflections on Field Archaeology" by Professor Martin Carver - are now available free to view from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

The purposes of archaeological investigation in the field, its methods and the circumstances in which it is deployed, have diversified radically in recent years. Half a century has passed since Mortimer Wheeler gave his Rhind Lectures on 'Archaeology from the Earth,' so it seems a good moment to reflect on what the international academy, the profession, government and society want from archaeological fieldwork, and how their diverse agendas might be addressed to the mutual benefit of all.

Martin Carver is emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of York, Editor of Antiquity and the author of Archaeological Investigation (Routledge, 2009). He has undertaken or advised on field projects in England, Scotland, Sweden, France, Italy and Algeria, including numerous commercial projects and major research campaigns at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) and Portmahomack (Easter Ross).

Papcastle Roman Fort - volunteers wanted

2010-05-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

A major investigation into Roman remains uncovered in the aftermath of Cockermouth's devastating floods is set to get underway this month.

Volunteers are needed for groundbreaking work on what is believed to be a settlement near the Papcastle Roman fort, surveyed by Channel 4's Time Team a decade ago but still not thoroughly excavated.

Forthcoming geophysical searches for buildings, roads and signs of occupation follow significant recent finds of possible foundations and a lot of pottery, unearthed by receding flood waters.

Organised by Bassenthwaite Reflections' Unlocking Hidden Heritage project, volunteers will be helping to piece together fascinating pieces of history in the first area study of its kind.

Using magnetometers - instruments that can detect buried walls - exploration will centre on fields alongside the River Derwent.

Project leader Mark Graham, of Grampus Heritage and Training, said there was real potential for adding to the compelling jigsaw of Roman occupation in the county.

He said: "With the help of volunteers, we were delighted to lead the nationally significant discovery of a camp, thought to date back to the first century at Castlerigg, near Keswick, two years ago.

"Now, through Heritage Lottery Fund supported Reflections, we have another amazing opportunity to find further vital Roman evidence.

"A considerable amount of pottery has been found post floods. We've always suspected the Romans had some sort of river crossing at Papcastle. Hopefully, our searches might provide some answers."

Details from the survey and excavation will form part of the county's archaeological record. Mark said the research could also bring important information for flood prevention and recovery measures currently under discussion.

He added: "This is a fantastic opportunity for volunteers to get involved in this unique survey and we look forward to hearing from anyone interested."

Fieldwork takes place from 24 to 28 May. For details contact Grampus Heritage and Training on 016973 21516, email enquiries@grampusheritage.co.uk

Manchester Museum conference on restitution

2010-05-18T02:57:00.000-07:00

The provisional programme of the Museums and Restitution conference (University of Manchester 8-9 July 2010) is now available

Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference organised by the Centre for Museology and The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. The conference examines the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject.

The conference will bring together museum professionals and academics from a wide range of fields (including museology, archaeology, anthropology, art history and cultural policy) to share ideas on contemporary approaches to restitution from the viewpoint of museums.

Community archaeology

2010-05-11T00:22:00.000-07:00

A press-release from the Council for British Archaeology:

CBA Report Reveals Voluntary Archaeology Has Doubled in Twenty Years

A new report highlights the sheer scale of voluntary archaeology in the
UK, and makes important recommendations about how these activities
should be supported in the future. Over 200,000 individuals are involved
in a community archaeology group or local society, carrying out
activities as diverse as excavation, marine archaeology, recording a
historic building or volunteering for a Young Archaeologists' Club
Branch. This figure has more than doubled since a similar survey was
carried out in 1987.

The reasons for this increase are varied. Interest in archaeology is
widening, with a greater range of television programmes, websites and
publications available than ever before. It may also relate to a real
expansion in voluntary activity of all kinds, with a recent report
indicating that 43% of adults had volunteered formally within the last
12 months. It is also significant that increased funding opportunities
for local archaeology groups have become available over the past decade,
especially from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) report, Community Archaeology
in the UK: Recent Findings, brings together a UK-wide research project
that surveyed, consulted and interviewed voluntary groups to gain a
clearer understanding of the nature and scale of voluntary involvement
in archaeology. Professional archaeologists and outreach workers were
also consulted to assess how the activities of voluntary archaeologists
could be better supported and recorded.

Key findings from the report are that:

* There are at least 2,030 voluntary groups and societies active
in the UK that interact with archaeological heritage in a wide variety
of ways. This represents approximately 215,000 individuals with an
active interest in archaeological heritage.

* Relationships between voluntary archaeologists and the c 7500
professional archaeologists in the UK are mostly good, but some problems
can be identified. Thus there is a case for more training for
professional archaeologists to equip them better to work with and
support volunteers.

* Group activities, even levels of expertise, are significantly
influenced by local conditions, such as relationships with professional
archaeologists, legislation, and availability of grants.

* The dramatic decline in continuing education departments and the
closure/down-sizing of many archaeological organisations continues to
have an impact.

* Sustainability is a key issue that emerged throughout the
research phases, and more research is needed into the means by which
bottom-up, community-led archaeology projects may work to ensure
sustainability.

* There is a need for training, but this varies from area to area,
and from group to group. Hence any training programmes must be tailored
to specific regions or groups, and must have an emphasis on practical
rather than passive sessions. Increased use of online learning models
will enable learners to choose material appropriate to their needs.
However, online provision cannot substitute for face-to-face
interaction, which is still considered to be of most value.

* Some community archaeology groups are very good at broadcasting
and publishing their work, others less so. 11% of groups that responded
to the survey claimed not to publish or broadcast their work at all.

The Council for British Archaeology will be acting on these conclusions
with ambitious plans to train a new generation of professional community
archaeology facilitators to help groups make the most of their
activities. The CBA will also be expanding its suite of advice and
guidance facilities, and focusing on raising the standard of work
carried out by volunteers.

Full report, and further details on our community archaeology work

Couldn't have put it better myself

2010-04-27T03:22:00.000-07:00

A pithy and succinct blogpost from a PfA member:
Aelwyd Fochon: These are the results, now, piss off.

Rock art symposium

2010-04-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I attended the bi-annual Rock Art symposium at the University of Bristol. The theme was the underlying mechanisms of rock-art: the political, social, economic, landscape, acoustic, musical factors that affect its production; and the story and poetry associated with it. Rock art, opines George Nash, the convenor of the conference, turns space into place. In order to appreciate it fully, we need to look at the context of sites in the wider landscape.

I missed the first paper of the conference due to arriving late, but the second paper, by Jamie Hampson, was about rock-art in the Kurnool district of India. One widely-noted aspect of rock-art is the superimposition of one image on another; Hampson believes that this is because the superimposed image may be intended to draw power from the image underneath. Another frequently-occurring motif is the depiction of more than the usual number of fingers, which may be due to altered states on the part of the artist. Likewise the depiction of intermediate species is not due to poor draughtsmanship, but may be due to altered states. The nearest tribal group to the people who produced the rock art of the Kurnool district are the Chenchu forest people; it would be good to speak to them to ascertain the meaning of the Kurnool rock art, which depicts tigers, deer, humans, other animals, hands and feet, and geometric forms, using shapes in the rock surface to enhance the art. The most frequently depicted animals are not necessarily the most sacred ones - for instance, we know from San (Bushman) mythology that Mantis is very important, but he is not depicted in their rock art. It's also possible that the artists placed their art near mineral seepages in the rock, so that the mineral would run over the drawing and "absorb" it into the rock. (The spirits are usually held to dwell in the rock itself.)

The next paper was presented by Christopher Chippindale, and entitled Music, archaeo-acoustics and rock-art location in the Copper Age of Valcamonica, Italy. He made the cery important point that when looking for either acoustic properties of sites, or for astronomical alignments, one must ask whether there are more such effects at ancient sites than would arise by chance? Not all alignments or sounds arise intentionally; so one must look for more than one site with an acoustic effect or an alignment to be sure that it's not just the product of chance. He and his team examined sites in Valcamonica (a region which is rich in rock art) and found three anomalous rock art locations. Most rock art in Valcamonica is on the curving lower slopes of the valley. These carvings were on vertical cliff-faces near flat ground. The researchers discovered that all three sites had spectacular echoes.

The next paper was by Paul Devereux, and entitled Rock Art: Underlying Mechanisms. He talked about the varied functions of rock art as way markers, territorial marks, and indicators for hunters. Distinctive natural places are widely regarded as interfaces with a world of spirits, who live in rocks, cliff-faces and underground. He talked about various sites around the world where lithophones (ringing rocks) occur naturally; they are frequently associated with rock art. Places where rock art is located are distinctive for many different reasons: shape, sound, veined rocks, water, echoes, lithophones. The natural sounds produced by such places can be quite powerful and affect brainwave patterns (as outlined in Cook et al, 2008).

The next paper was by Aron Mazel; Time, Colour and Sound: exploring the rock art of Didima Gorge, South Africa. He was initially sceptical about archaeo-acoustics, but after hearing Paul Devereux's paper at the last rock art symposium in 2008, decided to investigate acoustic effects in the Drakensberg region, which he has been studying for the last 30 years. He found that there are thirty times more paintings in the Ndedena Gorge than anywhere else in the Drakensberg, and more ritual- and trance-related pictures in the Northern Drakensberg (where the gorge is situated) than in the Southern Drakensberg. Waller (2003) found that natural sound at decorated locations was at greater decibel levels than at undecorated locations. Further, according to Rifkin (2009), percussive sound is used worldwide in ritual to facilitate movement between mental states. Ndedema is related to a Xhosa word 'Dum', to call or to roar. The gorge echoes with thunder and lightning, and when the bees swarm there, the sound is amplified to a roar. There is a painting of bees swarming in one of the caves. The San were living in the gorge in the 1870s and one of their bow and arrow kits was found there in the 1920s. According to ethnographic evidence from the Kalahari, where the San still live, bee-swarming time is a good time to go into trance. Therefore there is very likely a link between the rock art, natural sounds and trance states.

The next paper was on predicting pastoral movement in South West Libya by Maria Guagnin. She is studying the rock art of Messat Sattafet in Libya, near the Wadi al-Hayat. There, due to changes in moisture levels over the millennia, the variable patination of the rock art by manganese deposits from the rising waters of the nearby lake dates the rock art into four phases. There is a high density of rock art in the bays of the former lake (now dried up). These bays could be used as hunting traps to drive animals into; and the routeways where a lot of the rock art is near could be to do with the transhumance patterns of the pastoralists of the region. Having plotted about 100km of canyon wall, the team are now in a position to predict where more rock-art is likely to be, and plan to go back to find more.

The next paper, presented by Ruman Banerjee, who is working with Ramon Viñas, was on the rock art on the Levantine coast of Spain. The representation of women in this rock art could represent the emergence of a matrilineal society during the Iberian Neolithic, as women are depicted differently, with protruding breasts and long skirts. There is also a possible shamanic scene at Cabre d'Aguilo, which contains a depiction of a man giving head to another man, possibly a god, with bulls transforming into deer either side of them.

The next paper was by Anne Eastham, and was entitled Pathways and Property: a case study in the uses of prehistoric standing stones in North Pembrokeshire, Wales. This was about the re-use of stones in new contexts, as pilgrim way markers, grave markers and Christian crosses. She used comparative data from Brittany and Ireland.

The last paper was by Mike Eastham, talking about the difference between symbolic art and depiction. He pointed out that you can get information from art that simply depicts something without any inferences from culture; for example, a picture of a mammoth is recognisable as a mammoth, but we don't know if it symbolised anything. To understand symbolic art, on the other hand, you need to know the cultural motifs it employs. People who look at cave art often assume that it depicts shamans, magical hunting scenes and so on; but it might not have any of these meanings.

All in all, a fascinating conference.

Pagan festivals

2010-04-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

I found a useful US Navy page with the exact dates of the equinoxes and solstices for several years to come.

Wiccan festivals
Imbolc / Candlemas : February 1st/ 2nd
Spring Equinox : March 20th (2010) / 21st (2011)
Beltane / May Eve : April 30th / May 1st
Midsummer : June 21st (2010 and 2011)
Lammas/ Lughnasadh : July 31st/ August 1st
Autumn Equinox : September 23rd (2010 and 2011)
Samhain / Halloween October 31st/ November 1st
Yule : December 21st (2010) / 22nd (2011)

Druid festivals
Samhuinn : October 31-November 1
Winter Solstice (Alban Arthan or Alban Arthuan): Dec 21st (2010) / 22nd (2011)
Imbolc : February 1-2
Vernal Equinox (Alban Eiler or Alban Eilir): March 20th (2010) / 21st (2011)
Beltaine : April 30-May 1
Summer Solstice (Alban Heruin or Alban Hefin): June 21st (2010 and 2011)
Lughnasada : July 31-August 1
Autumn Equinox (Alban Elued or Alban Elfed): September 23rd (2010 and 2011)

Heathen Festivals
Different Heathen communities and individuals celebrate different cycles of seasonal holidays based on their cultural affiliations, local traditions, and relationships with particular gods. There is no fixed calendar of Heathen festival dates. The three Heathen festivals most commonly celebrated in the UK are Winter Nights - usually celebrated in October or November, Yule - a twelve day festival that begins around the time of the winter solstice, and a festival for the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre in the spring.

Religio Romana festivals
There are loads of these; and different practitioners seem to celebrate different ones.

What is Englishness?

2010-04-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

National Trust: St George's day has got us thinking - if you're English (or if you just want to chip in) what does it mean to you to be English?

Things that are quintessentially English for me: diversity, fair play, daft humour, Doctor Who, Monty Python, subversion, radicals, Nonconformism, individuality, landscape, the National Trust, cream teas, lazy Sundays, Shakespeare, Gerald Gardner, Thomas Hardy, the Golden Dawn, Scouts, Vimto, picnics in the rain, tea & biscuits, eccentricity, amateur dramatics, antiquarians, Gilbert & Sullivan, gin and tonic, punting, suffragettes, Flanders & Swann, JRR Tolkien, Robin Hood, cloth caps, Marmite, beer, Brontës, Quentin Crisp, punks, and moaning about the weather, the state of the economy, and all that sort of thing.

What things do you think are quintessentially English, and why? (please state if you are English or not in your comment - it's interesting to know how we perceive ourselves and how others see us).

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
~ from To a louse by Robert Burns

PhD studentship

2010-04-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

'Seeing the sacred in the museum: exploring the significance of religious
and secular subjectivities for visitor engagment with religious objects'

Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, Birkbeck College, University
of London, in collaboration with the British Museum

The aim of this doctoral project will be to explore the ways in which
visitors engage with religious objects at the British Museum, focusing
particularly on whether it is possible to identify ways of seeing or
engaging with objects that relate more generally to religious and secular
subjectivities. Drawing together current research in material religion and
museum visitor research, the award-holder will undertake original empirical
work that will both add to our understanding of the performance of religious
and secular subjectivities in public cultural spaces as well how museum
evaluation work might engage in new ways with religious dimensions of
visitor experience.

The studentship is available from 1 October 2010, and the award-holder will
benefit from the wide range of postgraduate support available at Birkbeck as
well as from the experience of working closely with colleagues at a
world-leading museum. The studentship covers full fees and a maintenance
allowance at standard AHRC rates for central London institutions. Potential
applicants should check their eligibility for the award before submitting
their application

The deadline for completed applications is 1 June 2010, with interviews
planned to take place before the end of June. Further details about the
studentship (including how to apply).

Gordon Lynch

Professor of Sociology of Religion and Director of the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society

Birkbeck College
University of London
26 Russell Square
London
WC1B 5DQ

+44(0)20 7631 6658

This is a very timely project, and it would be very interesting to see the results. I hope that they will be published.

I contend that museums are sacred spaces - inspired by the Enlightenment love of knowledge, and named after ancient shrines of the Muses, they are clearly quasi-sacred. We approach these shrines of knowledge with hushed voices and reverent steps.

The only problem with museums is that objects are frequently presented out of context (although the British Museum generally gets this right) or labelled in an inaccessible way by curators who try to be arty.

To contemporary Pagans, everywhere is sacred because the divine/deities is/are immanent in the world; but to some Pagans, some places are more sacred than others. Perhaps because museums are not generally regarded as sacred, it has not occurred to Pagans to view them as sacred; but to me, they are, along with libraries, because knowledge and reason are vitally important, and they confer freedom of thought.

Guest post by Bo: Let the dead bury the dead

2010-04-21T07:36:00.000-07:00

I lay awake recently turning the recent victory for archaeological research at Avebury over in my mind. It seems to me that the background hum, as it were, to the development of the 'reburial controversy' is the unexpected growth of an anti-intellectual streak amongst modern UK Pagans, particularly among druids. This, I think, essentially constitutes a delayed outbreak of recidivist footstamping at Ronald Hutton's flinging back the grubby curtains of fakelore to let the light into the dank caravan of pseudohistory. I'm not sure that this reactionary backsliding is necessarily conscious, and Hutton himself as always has done a splendid job of remaining on cordial terms with all sides. But I detect a general sense from some parts of the British Pagan spectrum that something has obscurely been taken from them, an undertow of anger at the perceived whittling-away of whatever mystique they felt they once possessed. Thus, the controversy about the excavation and retention of ancient human remains is a kind of flashpoint for a much more inchoate sense of aggrieved belittlement amongst a small section of self-identified Pagans.

This sense of disgruntlement has dovetailed unfortunately with the disturbing New Labour fondness for desecularising public discourse in the UK, persuading policy-makers, as Blair might have said, to 'do God.' Today's constant, nauseating invocation of 'Faith' is in part a misguided response to Muslim sensitivities (often more perceived than actual), which have been the dynamo for such legal precedents as have come to pass. In my opinion, the correct response to a developing multifaith society should be an absolute insistence on the secularism of the public realm, as in France. But the British, alas, have always preferred the incremental, well-meaning fudge to the crisp articulation of unbending principle. As a result, we have allowed a situation to develop in which the state forks out money for Papal visits, allows female Muslim medical staff to wear disposable sleeves instead of washing their forearms like everyone else, and in which, I might add, a tiny bunch of druids can waste thousands of pounds of public money.

The reburial controversy is interesting, I think, because it presents us with the peculiar spectacle of a number of self-proclaimed druids taking a leaf out of the Muslims' book, so to speak, exploiting a political climate of nervous deference to 'Faith' groups. Again, note the recentness of this: if Paul Davies' notorious reburial demand had been received by English Heritage twenty years ago, one suspects that everyone in the EH office would have had a good laugh and then it would have been promptly scrunched up and thrown in the bin. No longer. Rather, we now have a situation in which a religious body---representing a tiny number of people---are able to cause a serious and expensive inconvenience by invoking their outraged religious sensibilities.

Pagan complaints about the excavation and display of pre-Christian human remains in the UK are a very recent phenomenon, arising since the turn of the millennium. For the first fifty years of the British Pagan revival it simply doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone to get worked up about them. As suggested above, the publication of Hutton's pseudohistory-puncturing The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles in 1991 and The Triumph of the Moon in 1999 may well have something to do the emergence of the idea, which seems to me to have more to do, in most cases, with the development of divisive identity politics than with genuine religious feeling. If nothing else, the desire to have prehistoric bones reburied (or 'returned', whatever that might mean), reverencing them as tribal ancestors, is a way of impressing upon others one's visceral connection to the ancient past---the very thing to which Hutton had conclusively demonstrated modern Pagans have no substantive claim.

The first person to raise the issue of ancient human remains appears to have been Emma Restall Orr, a.k.a. 'Bobcat'. At the turn of the millennium Restall Orr was probably the most famous druid in all of history. She had, amongst other things, published one evocative and hugely influential memoir, Druid Priestess, and by 2002 she had both set up and appointed herself head of of The Druid Network, a large and influential organisation in Pagan terms. As this grew, and as she published further material (a second memoir, a guide to ritual, a book on Pagan ethics), she emerged as the centre of something of a cult of personality among druids, a phenomenon over which she may, to be fair to her, have had little personal control.

Restall Orr's attitude to Pagan ethics and polytheology, as articulated in her books and talks, became a powerful mixture of the sensuous evocation of the natural world and a slightly morbid Goth sensibility, much like an Alice Oswald poem sung by Diamanda Galas. Restall Orr's writing also inculcates a powerful distrust of knowledge and objectivity, preferring instead to evoke, very skillfully, the oceanic rush of submersive, boiling emotion. For this reader, this tends to make her style feel overheated: despite walk-on parts for blackbirds, oak trees, vixens &c, and for other druids both living and long dead, Restall Orr's writing is largely about Restall Orr. This is an observation, not a criticism. However, her huge influence led to her personal characteristics---even her favourite words, 'exquisite' and 'inspiring'---being widely affected by the UK druid community during the first few years of the new century. And, among those characteristics, two stand out: an understandable preoccupation with death and dying, and an austere seriousness of purpose which the unkind might mistake for the lack of a sense of humour.

It was Restall Orr, then, who began to raise questions about the retention of archaeologically-excavated pre-Christian human remains in UK museums, inspired in part by the politics of the repatriation of ancestral bones to native peoples around the world. She is, I think, not to be suspected of self-conscious bad faith; her strong feelings on the matter are quite genuine, and rooted in her perception of herself as a 'native person' and as an alleged psychic, for whom the spirits of the ancient dead are apparently as real, if not realer, than the living inhabitants of her home near a well-to-do Cotswolds market-town. It is clearly an issue which is close to her heart. However, and this is my key point in this article, I find it very hard to believe that this is true to the same extent for the majority of other druids and Pagans who have followed Restall Orr's lead in campaigning for reburial or for a more nebulous 'respect' for ancient remains. I fear the phenomenon of 'imitative emotion' is at play here: that is, the tendency of groups to learn to desire and feel certain things because they see others whom they would like to emulate desiring and feeling them. (We are all vulnerable to this phenomenon; after all, upon this psychological rock is built the great church of Marketing.) In my experience, the resulting induced emotions either display a certain unconvincing tinniness, or betray an instantly recognisable note of hysterical groupthink. Thus, whilst I am not accusing Restall Orr of cynical manipulation, it is a fact that she is one of the most admired and imitated of British Pagan leaders, and thus those who respect her deeply were all too ready to take up her tune.

To this end, she set up Honouring the Ancient Dead, a Pagan advocacy group lobbying for the 'dignified' treatment of ancient human remains excavated in the UK. Restall Orr is a smooth political operator, and one suspects that she has been aware from the start that her organisation must be seen to be adopting an attitude more dove-like than hawkish. She has avoided the easily-disprovable claims which the less adroit partisans of reburial have blundered into making, noting carefully that modern druids have no continuity of identity, practice, or language with the ancient druids, or indeed with any ancient pagans at all, and that neolithic bones, for example, are the remains of people who are the genetic ancestors of 95% of the UK population, not just Pagans. Paganism, after all, is currently a religion that one elects to follow, rather than being born into---at least for the most part.

HAD went on to have some notable early successes, including the temporary 'repatriation' of the Iron Age bog body Lindow Man to Cheshire. ('Why is this Cheshire man in London?' asked Restall Orr.) The exhibition of the body in Manchester Museum caused ructions, as the display referred extensively to the 'controversy' about the display of ancient remains and said very little about the archaeological reconstruction of Lindow Man's life and unpleasant death---an omission which prompted an annoyed article in British Archaeology. Restall Orr was prominently featured in the 'polyphonic' exhibition talking about what Lindow Man means to her; many felt the inclusion of a modern Pagan at the expense of more informative archaeological content was inappropriate. Another widely-derided 'voice' included in the exhibition was a piece by a local woman who had been a small child at the time of Lindow Man's discovery, complete with the sentimental impedimenta of her recollections of 1984---including a prominently displayed Care Bear.

For all this, Restall Orr was displeased by the display of the body. So distressed is Restall Orr by the alleged 'lack of respect' shown by the exhibition that she writes:

'leaving the gallery, I felt as if I’d just witnessed an assault, a cat killed by a passing car lying dead on the empty road, a child slapped into stinging silence by an incapable parent.'

This (rhetorical?) disinclination to distinguish between the past and the present, the imaginary and the actual, and the dead and the living, is very characteristic of Restall Orr's writing. The lack of proportion in this piece is almost eerie; after reading it, I had to have a look at Jane Clarke's heartbreaking account of adopting an orphaned baby girl from India, just to remind myself of what emotion felt for living people by other living people looks like, as a kind of experimental control. Set next to Jane Clarke's piece, Restall Orr's evocation of her own undifferentiated affect reads very oddly; the squalling tone of the piece ('What flooded through me here was a rage drenched in grief') makes it, I think, the first instance I've seen of something looking like genuine religious mania in a modern British Pagan. What's so odd about its emotional content is the fact that Restall Orr's sympathies have nothing to do with the actual death of Lindow Man, who, like the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived, came to a sticky end. Her rage-drenched grief is for the fate of the corpse of someone who died nearly two thousand years before she was born. More brutally, one wonders if her powerful and apparently compulsive identification with the cadavers of ages past does not represent, on some level, a kind of grief for herself. Of course we should be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the people whose ancient remains we view; I think it's quite appropriate, for example, to find something very poignant indeed in the casts of the bodies of people smothered by ash at Pompeii and Herculaneum:

The viewer who cannot make that link of imaginative sympathy with these long-dead people who suffered horribly as they died might rightly be charged with being emotionally deficient somewhere. But the tenor of Restall Orr's writing about the display of human remains shows her, in my opinion, to be in the grip of some more idiosyncratic emotion.

After the apparent success with Lindow Man, responses were marshalled by those who failed to find HAD's arguments convincing. It was led, with satisfying symmetry, by another woman: the redoubtable Yewtree of Pagans for Archaeology. By nature and inclination more concerned than Restall Orr with the living, as well as being fearsomely articulate, Yewtree has made a concerted effort over the last four years to question the assumptions of the reburial partisans from a Pagan perspective, acting on the quite correct suspicion that most British Pagans do not, in fact, sympathise one jot with the aims of HAD or its satellites. PfA's basic statement can be read here; note that as a body it explicitly opposes reburial.

One wonders if Restall Orr expected her sacerdotal intuitions and assumptions to be questioned, used as she is to camouflaging a certain personal autocracy with emollient gestures towards consensus. The public rhetoric of HAD itself tends towards the articulation of emotional pain, which reflects a clever triangulation on Restall Orr's part, herself in favour of universal reburial. But by raising the issue of pre-Christian remains, Restall Orr, alas, galvanised the lunatic fringe of the druid community into beginning active and confrontational campaigns for reburial---those imitative emotions once again. This fringe consists of 'CoBDO', that is, 'The Council of British Druid Orders', their splinter-group 'CoBDO West', and the 'Loyal Arthurian Warband'.

Once museums up and down the land found themselves faced with charged emails and letters of protest, not to mention people turning up in robes, a strikingly beautiful Latin American ex-model in a wheelchair and black velvet must suddenly have seemed like the voice of sweet reason. It was slyly done, and yet again I ask you, especially if you are not British, to remember the uncertain atmosphere of deference to religious sensitivities and worry about causing offence which came to obtain in the UK public sector in the early noughties. It could well be that the chance to 'show sensitivity to Faith-based groups' was welcomed by museum managers with targets to meet and boxes to tick. This skillful act of triangulation allowed HAD, in all its glory, to oyster-knife its way firmly into British archaeological discourse and debate.

It may have surprised Restall Orr to find, thanks to Pagans for Archaeology, that a lot of druids and Pagans actually had quite different feelings on the matter of ancient human remains, and were prepared to say so, loudly. Numbers are difficult to ascertain as HAD does not release its membership or volunteer figures; nevertheless, from inside knowledge, it is likely that PfA's membership of several hundred is quite a few times larger than that of HAD. At any rate PfA's support---with a large conference last year fielding speakers including Ronald Hutton---shows that a considerable proportion of British Pagans disagree with the aims of the reburiers and their use of what they see as emotive and misleading language.

Opposition to HAD and its ilk has advanced on a number of fronts. The first has been a lacerating analysis of Restall Orr's oddly limited discourse of 'respect', according to which only very limited periods of scientific study followed by prompt reburial can possibly comprise a 'dignified' and 'honourable' way in which to treat ancient human remains. Restall Orr is good at putting an articulate spin on this, but it is at heart an untenable view. Ultimately it represents a kind of argument from 'common human decency' (CoBDO have actually been foolish enough to use this phrase in this context), a notoriously variable and culture-specific value. Yewtree and others have articulated an alternative and more considered discourse of respect: respect as the rediscovery and perpetuation of memory, respect as learning about the lives of people who lived in the past, respect as evocation of historical realities. Furthermore, archaeologists have pointed out that at least in the neolithic, bones placed in long barrows were frequently exhumed and ritually interacted with by the community, by their descendants; the idea that our concept of 'decency' regarding the dead can be mapped onto the pre-Christian inhabitants of Britain is simply an anachronism.

The second prong of the campaign against HAD and its hangers-on hinges on disputing the claim that contemporary Pagans should have some kind of special say in the fate of excavated pre-Christian human remains. Restall Orr, who is nobody's fool, knows that any claim of continuity with the pre-Christian people of 1500+ years ago is inviting ridicule in a post-Hutton world, and has argued in interviews that Pagans are not entitled to a special say, but are entitled to have their special interest in the matter acknowledged. (This argument was put forward in June 2007 in a religion discussion show called Heaven and Earth.) Again, slickly done; but I am not at all clear what the practical difference is supposed to be. Down at the woolly end, other heads have been hotter. Take Paul Davies, of the splinter-group whose campaign to have the neolithic child's skeleton from Avebury museum reburied finally failed last week. His original demand for the bones cast himself in the role of, say, an aboriginal elder coming to repatriate the remains of a tribal ancestor stolen from his resting-place by wicked colonial imperialists in the 19th century. Both CoBDO West and the original CoBDO tried to claim some kind of continuity of religious identity, although the logical thrust of their argument is frankly rather hard to follow. From the CoBDO website:

The fact that the little girl (?) whose remains lie in the Alexander Keiller Museum was found in the ditch at Windmill Hill, a major satellite of the Avebury sanctuary complex, clearly signifies association, on behalf of herself and/or her parents, with the ancient native pagan belief structure which the Avebury sanctuary complex itself represents, as this was unlikely to have been a random burial.
Although it might be stated that we have no clear idea which specific native religion she or her parents adhered to, as we do not know the names of the various faiths practiced at that time, nevertheless the term pagan is the best umbrella designation we have for those of pre-christian religious persuasion.
As the modern incarnation of these several belief structures and pagan pre-historic cultural pursuits, druids and pagans who likewise revere the sanctity of the Avebury complex, in this day and age, are descendants in belief of that same belief structure that not only led the megalithic builders to construct Avebury, but has also led countless generations subsequently to revere the Avebury complex and the sanctity it represents.

Whilst is may be true that 'pagan' is 'the best umbrella designation we have for those of pre-christian religious persuasion', 'pagan' and 'Pagan' are not the same. What on earth does it mean to say that you are the 'modern incarnation' of such 'pre-historic cultural pursuits'? Isn't there an obvious difference between 'pagan' in the everyday sense of 'to do with pre-Christian religions', and 'Pagan' meaning Wicca, Druidry, and other movements of recent origin---a familiar difference which is being crudely elided here?

Of course, Restall Orr's invocation of 'special interest' is a colossal own-goal, because anyone who visits a museum and involves themselves may be said to have a special interest. It's nothing to do with Paganism or one's religion. In the absence of any priviledged genetic connection to the ancient bones (above and beyond that of the rest of the UK population), and in the further absence of any provable continuities of religious belief and practice, the 'interest' of Restall Orr is no more and no less 'special' than that of the local schoolgirl who comes to sketch the bones for GCSE Art, or of the amateur archaeologist interested in the neolithic. In a fair society, no one's 'special interest' trumps anyone else's: and more specifically, why should the views of Davies or Restall Orr qua Pagans be privileged above the views of other Pagans which are diametrically opposed to theirs?

Thus the debate has had one positive outcome, which is to make it very clear that HAD does not speak for the Pagan community as a whole, a distinction which inevitably was not clear to the mainstream media reporting on the Avebury fracas. Many Pagans were seriously displeased at being associated in the press with a tiny group whom they perceived as courting public attention, when, for the majority of Pagans, their view on ancient human remains is congruent with the pervasive secular one.

Finally, Restall Orr should be thanked for opening up the area to moral debate. The ethical issues are, in my view, in a sense both complex and simple. I am still not sure how it is really possible to disrespect the long-dead. We walk on them everyday; a proportion of our bodies is made of the recycled molecules of ancient corpses. Human remains are not people; they were people, and they are now, if you like, 'ex-persons'. I doubt that any modern British Pagan seriously, theologically, believes that the exhumed dead are at present actually suffering, despite the claims of Paul Davies, who mentioned 'Charlie's' 'plight' in an newspaper interview. This is part of what reads so oddly in the emotional splurge of Restall Orr's Manchester piece: cui bono? Who is supposed to benefit from all this? Is it the late, lamented corpse? Or its ghostly shade?

The heart of the moral issue seems to me to be that the living, who can change their destinies, grow, and suffer, are simply more important than the dead. The genuine needs of the living---for education, for a sense of their own history and that of their country, even for space to be buried themselves---must always trump such needs as the dead may be said to have, because the dead as persons do not suffer or change. They can be damaged, but not harmed. Any moral individual would consent to the bones of a beloved relative being dug up if it would somehow save the life of a child. With the long dead, whom no one living has remembered for millennia, and in the absence of genuine cultural continuity with those currently living, my own feeling is that beyond a basic respectful acknowledgement of our once-shared humanity, the needs of the living are paramount. By way of 'respectful acknowledgement', I would see something like a small notecard appended to every display of ancient remains, reminding the viewer that these dry bones once lived as they do, as more than adequate. (This is precisely what the Boscastle Witchcraft Museum has in the case of a skull dipped in tar which it has on display.) The needs of the living, on the other hand, include the needs of osteoarchaeologists to have access to well-stored and catalogued remains preserved from deterioration, in anticipation of the new scientific techniques which will undoubtably be developed. It also encompasses the needs of the public to learn about how people lived in the deep past---people who are, after all, every bit as much their ancestors are they are those of a tiny number of druids, who seems to have a lot invested in their cultural enfranchisement and offical recognition of their importance. This moral imperative extends to time and money; in my view, the smallest injustice or cause of suffering in the world of the living has a greater claim over the time and energies of the 'spiritual' person than the reburial of the most poignant of ancient skeletons. If you have donated five pounds to a charity that works with abused children or the eldery, or campaigns for the protection of the enviroment, if you have ever planted a tree or rescued a cat or done someone a single act of kindness, then, in my opinion, you have performed an act the ethical content of which outweighs everything that HAD has ever achieved or ever will. Indeed, when the 'pagan' dimension is taken away, HAD seems to lose interest, for all its vaunted ethics; there have been no noises from HAD on the sad fact that 72 infants were buried in a mass graves in Southwark last year, including one which was dug up and dragged away by a fox. Perhaps they are not old enough, and druids can only wax sentimental about infant corpses after a few thousand years have passed; or perhaps actually caring about people---and poor people at that---is less rewarding than communing with the tortured spirit of the ancient bones.

On that note, it may interest the reader to know that I have written to the relevant bodies, as it happens, to see if I can discover the precise cost to the taxpayer of the Avebury Consultation under the Freedom of Information Act. It would be very tempting indeed to take that information and present it to HAD, CoBDO and the Druid Network, asking if their members would like to match the amount in donations to a charity----the wonderful Camilla Batmanghelidjh's Kids Company or the NSPCC, perhaps---which works to help living children, rather than those who died millennia ago.

Strange rumour

2010-04-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

It has just been brought to my attention that there is a rumour going round that PfA and HAD are joining forces, with PfA becoming part of HAD.

Certainly this has been suggested to me by several members of HAD, but I have always said no, and will continue to say no. I still haven't been HAD.

Pagans for Archaeology is an independent body representing those who are opposed to reburial and who support archaeology and museums. Its position is therefore incompatible with HAD's view, which is that reburial is one of a range of options (and presumably the preferred option) for dealing with ancient human remains.

Respect is...

2010-04-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

using your vote in elections, because people in the past died for the right to have a vote (especially if you're a woman)
respecting the Earth you walk on and our fellow beings that live on it (both human and animal - i.e. real people not imaginary ones)
remembering your ancestors and honouring their contributions to the present (not burying their remains in some obscure place and then forgetting about them)
honouring knowledge and wisdom wherever it may be found

(please add your own ideas of respect in the comments)

Avebury remains to stay in museum

2010-04-07T02:16:00.000-07:00

AVEBURY REBURIAL REQUEST: THE HUMAN REMAINS WILL STAY IN AVEBURY MUSEUM

After consideration of evidence and extensive consultation, English Heritage have decided that the prehistoric human remains in the Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, should be kept in the museum for the benefit of public access and understanding.

These Neolithic human remains were excavated in the Avebury area by Alexander Keiller between 1929 and 1935. In 2006, Paul Davies of the Council of British Druid Orders requested their reburial. English Heritage and the National Trust followed the recently-published DCMS process in considering this request, and went out to public consultation in 2009 on a draft report which set out the evidence and different options.

English Heritage and the National Trust have now published a report on the results of this consultation, and a second report on the results of a public opinion survey. Our summary report concludes that the request should be refused for four main reasons:
the benefit to future understanding likely to result from not reburying the remains far outweighs the harm likely to result from not reburying them;
it does not meet the criteria set out by the DCMS for considering such requests;
not reburying the remains is the more reversible option;
the public generally support the retention of prehistoric human remains in museums, and their inclusion in museum displays to increase understanding.

This is excellent news, and a victory for common sense. Many thanks and well done to all the members of Pagans for Archaeology who responded to the consultation. And congratulations to the National Trust and English Heritage for not bowing to pressure from a tiny minority of Pagans, who represent an even smaller minority of the general public.

Keeping remains in museums is not "disrespectful" - it is a way of making the real story of the individual and their community known and honoured in the present.

Hypatia of Alexandria

2010-03-26T02:31:00.000-07:00

Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria's Great Female Scholar
An avowed pagan in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian

This is an excellent article about Hypatia, the Neoplatonist mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. As most people know, she was murdered by a Christian mob. There is also a Spanish film about her, Agora (2009).

Hypatia is also the Guardian Ancestor of Cherry Hill Seminary, which provides higher education and practical training in Pagan ministry.

Update on King's College London

2010-03-23T03:01:00.000-07:00

Last month, I blogged about the threat to the Chair of Palaeography at King's and the wider implications for humanities subjects. The threat has not gone away; indeed there has been an international outcry about it.

UCU members at King's College vote for strike action - UCU 22 March 2010
Members of UCU at King's College London have today voted overwhelmingly in favour of both strike action and action short of a strike in their fight to save jobs.

The Engineering department is to be closed after 170 years at King's, the Equalities and Diversity department has been scrapped and there are threats to Philosophy, Information Resources, American Studies and the only Chair of Palaeography in the UK.

Pagan census initiative

2010-03-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

A group called Pagan Dash has set up a website to encourage people to state that they are Pagan on the 2011 census form.

In 2011 there is to be a Census in the UK. It’s time for Pagans of ALL paths to be counted.

In 2001 we were able for the first time, to write in our religious affiliation on the Census form. A campaign was started by a number of diverse groups to write Pagan in the ‘religion other’ section. Whilst in the main people did, we lost the individual path identity and some resented this. Furthermore, due to the way the Office of National Statistics counts religious affiliation responses, Pagans ended up having our number diluted across a number of categories. Even though many wrote Pagan, the campaign didn’t reach all Pagans. This means that every time we are asked the question ‘how many of you are there?’ we cannot come back with a simple answer.

This doesn’t need to happen!

The ONS wants to count us. They have a ‘mandate of inclusion’ which means they are looking for ways to include us in their figures. Looking at the raw data that was provided last time to us gave us some startling insights. However, as mentioned, by just writing Pagan on your form, we lose the data for various paths, and our diversity — but there is a simple solution — one that’s worked elsewhere.

In Australia in 2001 there were 10,000 Pagans in the census. Just 5 years later, with this initiative, their numbers are being counted as nearer 70,000. So if we can do the same here, and get more accurate numbers it will go a long way to getting the recognition we have fought for, and deserve.

All you need to do is put down your religion as:

Pagan — [insert your chosen path]

Some examples:
Pagan — Druid
Pagan — Wiccan
Pagan — Witch
Pagan — Heathen
Pagan — Neo-Shaman
Etc.

Why do we need to ‘Stand up and be counted?’

For too long we have known that there are significant numbers of people who identify as Pagan. The estimates have been from 20,000 to 140,000 or more. But we’ve never had any really accurate figures for a number of historical reasons. We now have the chance to know just how many of us are there. Why do we need to know?

In the 2001 census some 30,000 people wrote Pagan. An additional 10,000 Pagans wrote their path specifically (Druid, Wiccan, witch etc.). Combined, this made us the 7th largest faith in the UK. While this number is significant, in the course of speaking to Pagans at various moots, events etc, we found there were approximately only 1 in 5 who had expressed their beliefs. This leaves a significant number not accounted for, or even counted. As a further problem the Heathens were originally counted with the Atheists in the results — which did not please them one bit!

If the Office of National Statistics has our true numbers:

We can then be officially recognized as a serious religious choice,
The government can see that we vote and there are enough of us to make a difference,
Pagan organizations can show they are representative,
We can achieve more representation within the local and wider community,
Pagan organizations will have credibility when dealing with both businesses and the government to provide the services you need.
This means it will be easier for us to be heard, our religious / spiritual sensitivities taken into account - and especially at those times when it is really important - in hospitals and hospices, for our children in schools, in the military and police and other places of work, in courts and prisons, when dealing with social workers and health visitors, at times when we face prejudice and discrimination.

So, what can you do to help?
Tell your friends!
Get your Pagan organization involved
Bring it up at your next moot
Put a link on your website to PaganDash
Give us your ideas about how to get the word out

Coins of ancient Rome

2010-03-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

Ancient Rome had some rather interesting coins with nude figures and erotic imagery. The Denge blog has pictures, and asks whether these coins were used to pay prostitutes, or were in general circulation. If they were in general circulation, what was the symbolism of the explicit scenes on them?

Axeing the humanities

2010-03-09T01:55:00.000-08:00

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy blog has an update on the threatened closure of the Chair of Palaeography at King's College London, which I blogged about last month. He quotes from an article by Iain Pears pointing out that expenditure on senior management salaries at King's has increased massively over the last few years, and a modest cut in the administrative budget would be enough to save the Chair of Palaeography, and fund an entire department of palaeographers.

The average vice-chancellor now earns nearly three times as much as a professor, much more than the prime minister and more than the average private sector chief executive. The Principal of King’s, Rick Trainor, had a pay package which rose to £312,000 in 2008/9 from £292,000 the year before and £250,000 in 2006/7. His predecessor made do on £186,000 in 2002. While one person at King’s earned more than £150,000 in 2001/2, this had risen to 79 in 2009.

Keeping palaeography alive by cutting back on the generosity to senior staff does not appear to be an option for discussion, although reducing Professor Trainor’s package to a mere quarter of a million would help out, and a 5 per cent cut in take-home pay for the top 79 earners would produce more than a million pounds, enough for several departments of palaeographers.

Why does this matter? Because humanities subjects (including archaeology, history, palaeography and languages) are regarded by university senior management as merely ornamental and not directly contributing to the economy, and therefore surplus to requirements. We must resist this utilitarian view, as it impoverishes the meaning and purpose of education.

Palaeography is the study of ancient handwriting and the practice of deciphering and reading historical manuscripts. Imagine if no-one was able to read Magna Carta, or the Declaration of Arbroath, or other founding documents of our culture. Imagine if a new manuscript was discovered, and no-one could read it.

Black Dog: an interview with David Waldron

2010-03-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

David Waldron is the author of a new book, Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Case Study in Local Folklore, and he kindly agreed to be interviewed by Pagans for Archaeology. It's his second book; the first was The Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival (Ritual Studies Monograph). He lives in Australia.

PfA: What got you interested in Black Dog folklore?

DW: Well to be honest it was when my father became minister of Emmanuel Church in Bungay and I started to hear the story from friends and family over there. As an Australian in a very colonial way my first response was something along the lines of “How cool is that!” and then started to do some digging on the tale. I think people in the UK sometimes don’t realize just how fascinating and intoxicating the level of historicity in Britain is. Especially for Australians and Americans who usually have less than 200 years of white colonization behind them and the kind of anxiety that having claimed displaced indigenous land creates. I think it is the same reason Australian and American Pagans tend to be extremely fixated on the UK or at least European heritage as a source of “authenticity” and legitimacy. Beltane in Mt Franklin near Ballarat where I live, for example, occurs in a Volcano crater which was landscaped in the 19th century to look British with Elms and pines and the like and the crater walls serve to disconnect from the Australian landscape and help create the illusion of connectedness to European heritage.

In terms of my own experience, I was first digging into the Bungay legend coming out of the reformation as it does, at the time I was writing my first book on the history of Witchcraft and saw a lot of close links. It gave me an opportunity to look at the romanticization of the past, the myth of pagan survivals, the trauma left from the reformation etc at the local level. After having done so much research from Australia via text books and the like the ability to get into primary sources first hand at the local level was just fantastic. I’d also been looking at broad pan-British or even pan-Anglophone issues in “Sign of the Witch” and I’d really wanted to get into what these sort of things actually meant at the level of communities and individuals rather than the broad sweeping brush strokes people so often work with.

PfA: What is the significance of Black Dog folklore? How widespread is it? How does it relate to other spectral dogs?

DW: Black Dog folklore is quite enormous and I would say it's global. Essentially every culture with dogs has variations on Black Dog myths. In particular the configuration of the dog as a creature of the boundaries of human/animal, death/life, predator/protector and spirtworld/physical world is almost universal. I even came across Aztec and Australian Aboriginal mythology paralleling that of British Black Dogs. A colleague of mine researching Australian Aboriginal folklore had a story from the Northern territory of spiritual Dingos that could talk and if one spoke to you and you answered back as you would a human (i.e. boundary violation) you were turned to stone or it ate your spirit. There are two schools of thought on this. One is that these stories are somehow directly linked (i.e. there are common historical origins); the other is that they are simply archetypal. I would suggest it has a lot to do with the nature of Dogs themselves as a symbiotic animal with 40,000 odd years of close relations with humans. Spectral Dogs, particularly Black Dogs or, less often, white Dogs are common in folklore in pretty much every region of Britain. However there is another point to make, which is the legacy of folklorists themselves. A common theme in reviews of 19th century literature of Black Dog folklore was the tendency of people to group vastly different stories together as “Black Dog” myths and over time they gradually blurred together and started to change the local tales into iconic Black Dog legends from what were originally stories about say someone’s dead dog who was thought to be a ghost or a shape-changing trickster fey creature who might happen to take a dog form becoming very quickly a “Black Dog”. People were so eager, post-Frazer, to see universal patterns that they actually actively went and shifted stories to what they were wanting to find and then over time changed the local myth and communities took up these stories and interpretations themselves. This is a pattern Ronald Hutton refers to a lot in “Witches, Druids and King Arthur” for example.

PfA: What can this study tell us about the links between folklore and the Pagan revival?

DW: I think a key issue for me was that transmission of symbols, images and ideas from the pagan past are very fragmentary, complex and ambivalent. People are very quick to throw the “Pagan Survival” label around because they so badly need to feel a connection to the past and a feeling of pastness in what they do. People can also be very quick to deny connection to a Pagan past when debunking. One thing that was really apparent to me when doing my research on the Black Dog of Bungay from a local history perspective, was that it is not a zero sum game. Let’s look at the Black Dog of Bungay for example. There are fragments in the myth from the Celts, Vikings and Romans for example. However, if I was to speak to a 16th century Puritan in Bungay he may not even know what a Celt was and would certainly take offense at the suggestion his view of the attack on St Mary’s church by a Black Dog or “Devile in such a likenesse” was Pagan. On the contrary he has a whole wealth of cultural forms he takes up and integrates into his protestant Christian identity much the same way Christmas today is a Christian ritual with fragments of our cultural heritage from all over the place. This is much the same with the folkloric beliefs in the witch trials. Emma Wilby talks about all the bits and pieces of Shamanic folklore, ritual and practices in the English witch trials of the civil war some of which predate Christianity yet are very much interpreted in a Christian context. People didn’t differentiate their folklore the way we do today and you can’t separate Christianity from its local cultural context which includes a wealth of forms, images, rituals and ideas. This is much like say Catholicism in Latin America which integrates all sorts of bits of folklore from all over the place into a strongly Catholic tradition. The analogy I use in my book is that the legacy of Pagan survivals is very much like language. The English I speak today is full of the legacy of Latin, French, Greek, Celtic and Germanic dialects and is shaped by all sorts of social and cultural factors that are connected to my heritage. So even the meaning associated with the fragments that make up my language have changed my English is no more Latin than Christmas is Pagan. Yet, that being said the connection to the past and the vast array of influences in what my language is today are still there constantly coming together, separating, old words fall away and receive new meaning new words and influences come into focus and the context in which I make sense of them constantly change. So it’s a constant growing and transforming process experience by different cultures and sectors of society differently and it’s a mistake to try to interpret the past from a modern context and then try to overlay that interpretation on the present.

On another side I found in Theodora Brown’s (a very detailed folklorist of the early 20th century who has literally boxes and boxes of resources of British myths like the Black Dog archives in Exeter) collection that Margaret Murray and others were frantically and deliberately looking for something, anything, to support her witchcraft as pagan survival hypothesis. I found all these letters and transcripts of the Devon folklore association meetings of Margaret Murray badgering Theodora Brown to present her findings on Black Dog myths in England as part of a witch cult linked to pre-Christian Paganism. Presuming that was going on all over the place with other folklorists, it brings to mind the stridency with which the early Wiccan movement were pushing to configure culture in a way that supported their contention that it was a survival pre-Christian belief system and the fervour which religiosity can bring to interpretations of the past. That being said while there are very obvious examples of the Pagan community doing this, a lot illustrated by Hutton, it is a pattern common to all religious beliefs and often pursued with a lot more aggression by say Christians, Jews and Muslims for example especially once linked to politics.

PfA: What can the (re-)construction of the Black Dog legend tell us about how folklore develops? What function do these stories have?

DW: I think, that aside from the fragmentary nature by which aspects of culture become part of the communicative and archetypal structure by which people tell stories and make sense of the world, it’s important to note that it's constantly in a state of flux and growth. So much of the folklore studies of the 19th and 20th centuries presupposed, via Frazer, that folklore was this static primordial thing located in the countryside. Even in the most remote areas, folklore is constantly evolving and being reconstructed and within a generation the origins of a story, festival or myth can become lost and thus seem to originate in a primordial past. Another important aspect is the way in which the very act of studying and publishing on folklore can actually change the myth itself as people take up these interpretations as part of their own heritage and use them to make sense of their own traditions. This can also happen with literary fiction that can be taken up if it resonates with the myth and the culture and within a generation it can seem like people have always had this point of view. One example from the Black Dog of Bungay was the myth that the Black Dog is the cursed soul of Lord Bigod. The earliest mention Chris and I could find for it anywhere was in Anthony Hippsley Coxe’s “Haunted Britain” published in 1973. Now when I went over to Devon to get into Theo Brown’s archives I spoke to people who knew him and saw Theo Brown’s discussion of that myth and found that he had lacked information and presumed parallels with a black Dog story he was more familiar with, that of Squire Richard Cabell in Dartmoor, and used it as a template for Bungay. The thing is that story was taken up with gusto in Bungay and ran in all the papers, the local publications etc and became a central component of the myth. It fitted into the story really well. It tied two different myths together and linked to two most prominent historic buildings in town: the Church of St Mary’s and the Castle. Now it's local folkloric orthodoxy if you like.

PfA: What bearing does the Black Dog legend have on the relationship between folklore and the literary tradition? For instance, the Black Shuck is referenced in Jane Eyre.

DW: I think one issue is that that they are closely linked. Our engagement with popular culture is as much part of our cultural heritage as myths, legends, folklore and empirical history. Some, like Frederik Jameson for example, would say literature and film etc are a darn sight more culturally important today. I found the story of Bungay having a linking network of secret underground tunnels originated in Elizabeth Bonhote’s novel “Bungay Castle”. It is a late 18th C Gothic romance novel (but with a very plucky female protagonist having to rescue her deathly ill imprisoned lover which I think was pretty cool and liberated for the era) which was very popular at the start of the 19th century but had been almost completely forgotten by the late 19th C. Elizabeth lived in Bungay and loved the ruins of St Mary’s and the castle and was inspired by the remains of King Stephen’s siege works, including sapper tunnels, to have a secret labyrinth of tunnels under the town in which to have adventures. Now this was taken up as part of the town folklore and then linked to the English Civil war where it was meant to be built by Cromwell’s men and contain caches of weapons etc. When they found secret rooms buried in the graveyard of Emmanuel Church in 1977 this became integrated into the story and now taken as given. The thing is we tell stories as part of our lived social and community experience. They say things about who we are, our values and our culture. They are like art but in a communicative context. So fiction is part of this process and we take things from literary and cinematic culture into our folklore. Fiction however is a product of people in a community and draws on this to give a story resonance and archetypal significance (as well as being just really fun and entertaining). It’s a mutual organic process. I think the anxiety comes from, in a post enlightenment world and as products of a modern education system, there is an underlying perception that legitimacy can only come from empirical veracity. So while, as Hutton comments, a well-crafted fiction can supplant any amount of historical fact in the imagination of people in a community and become folklore we feel we can only give these stories legitimacy if we can prove them by the rhetoric of empirical research. Empirical research and science however have a completely different function and are indifferent to the emotional and spiritual needs of people in a community. Thus we have an underlying tension which can often manifest itself in people taking up a literary fiction (originating out of a creative application of folklore and archetypal imagery) as fact and then becoming traumatized and often very aggressive when this belief or story is challenged on empirical terms. The legacy of “The Mists of Avalon” in the pagan community is a good example of this I think.

It’s interesting how often when I mentioned my research into the Black Dog of Bungay people then proceeded to tell me the plot of the Patrick Swayze film “the Black Dog” to me as an urban legend but one they are sure happened to their cousin or friend etc. As a historian, what do you do with that. It’s a yarn taken up as a literary fiction, but one based on established cultural forms and archetypes, which is appropriated as a story about who they are. It’s not true in the empirical sense but it has emotional resonance to them and they need to feel it’s empirically true for it to have legitimacy and feel real for them. There are different kinds of truth and a side product of our post—enlightenment culture is the need for our fictions to feel empirically true to have validity yet empirical truth runs counter to how folklore and storytelling function and develop in a community.

Great is Artemis of the cheese!

2010-03-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

Sorita d'Este has found a reference to an ancient Greek cheese-stealing ritual:

In Lakedaimonion Politeia (2.9) we find a reference to this cheese stealing ritual in which two opposing groups of young men would contest some cheese, which would be stored on the altar of Artemis. The first group would defend the cheese with whips and the second group would try to steal it.

I definitely think this ritual should be revived; it sounds excellent. I'm sure it would benefit the cheese-makers (who are, as is well-known, blessèd, along with other manufacturers of dairy products).

Newsnight report on HAD

2010-03-04T01:58:00.000-08:00

Just seen this posted on Facebook:
BBC Newsnight: Pagans call for reburial of ancient human remains (video)

Somewhat patronising comments about Paganism from the BBC. "Pagans aren't used to being taken seriously." Hello, BBC, Pagans pay their licence fee just as much as the next person, and do expect to be taken seriously, actually. How about starting with doing some research and finding out that not all Pagans want these remains reburied? Pagans for Archaeology now has 1,344 fans on Facebook, and the group has 330 members. The case for retaining human remains for study is clear and reasonable.

It's interesting that museum professionals have become increasingly receptive to reburial claims. Why is it now deemed disrespectful to keep remains in museums? There is no inherent disrespect in doing this. It's not like those weird ossuaries where bones are turned into decorative displays.

And why aren't Pagans making as much noise protesting about climate change and species extinction, demanding same-sex marriage, campaigning for Pagan handfastings to be legally recognised, and other pressing issues of the day?

Göbekli Tepe temple rewrites history

2010-02-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago — a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture — the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

— History in the Remaking by Patrick Symmes in Newsweek

Cloning Neanderthals

2010-02-15T02:35:00.000-08:00

Heather Pringle has three posts about cloning Neanderthals:

Heather Pringle writes:

First of all, I should point out that this is not a pie-in-the-sky question. Zorich interviewed an impressive A-list of researchers–including geneticists who are sequencing the Neanderthal genome and leading paleoanthropologists who study ancient hominins–and some clearly believe that a cloned Neanderthal awaits us somewhere down the line.

So it’s not too early to begin thinking and debating about the ethics of cloning one of our hominin kin. While some researchers champion the idea out of pure scientific curiosity and the desire to learn more about an extinct hominin, I think it’s a terrible idea. I simply don’t trust my fellow Homo sapiens sapiens to treat another hominin with kindness and respect. Our track record with other primates, for example, is appalling–using chimpanzees for circus shows and laboratory experimentation, hunting gorillas for meat, and killing orangutan mothers in order to sell their babies as pets.

I can just imagine cloned Neanderthals being used as hosts for replacement organs, or for medical experiments, or other unpleasant scenarios.

What's your opinion?

Palaeography petition

2010-02-04T00:47:00.000-08:00

The Chair of Palaeography at King's College in the University of London is the only one of its kind in the UK, and is of fundamental intellectual significance to a broad and interdisciplinary scholarly community as well as to the wider community beyond universities. Many other classical, medieval and early modern disciplines depend on the accurate deciphering of manuscripts and documents and their proper understanding, while the study of writing offers a gateway to the comprehension of our own history, writ large. We therefore urge the Executive of KCL to reconsider their proposal to cut this prestigious Chair.

Archaeology on the radio

2010-02-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

In Pursuit of Treasure
Sunday 7 Feb, 13:30 on BBC Radio 4

Archaeologist and broadcaster Mike Pitts delves into the sometimes murky world of the metal detector, from harmless amateur history buffs to criminal nighthawkers, and discovers how metal detecting is changing our national heritage. He hears stories of in-fighting within the metal detecting community, bust-ups between landowners and detectorists and battles inside the archaeological establishment. And Mike hears from the man who found a multi-million pound Saxon hoard.

The Voices Who Dug Up The Past
Episode 1
Monday 8 Feb, 11:00 on BBC Radio 4

Broadcaster and archaeologist Mike Pitts delves into the question of why different archaeologists can dig the same sites yet reach completely different conclusions. Mike visits Britain's biggest Iron Age hill fort, Maiden Castle, and, through archive, diary excerpts and interviews, relives two seminal digs that took place there in the 1930s and 1980s. Is it a monument tied up in Roman warfare and invasion, or a structure symbolising power and exclusion from the outside world? Featuring interviews with Niall Sharples, Beatrice de Cardi, Ian Armit and Chris Sparey-Green.

The Voices Who Dug Up The Past
Episode 2
Monday 15 Feb, 11:00 on BBC Radio 4

Mike visits Sutton Hoo, with Lady Clark and Martin Carver among others.

Woolworths alignments

2010-01-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

A researcher at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London has applied the techniques used by the kind of people who find mysterious alignments in the landscape to another mysterious and lost civilisation: the mysterious late-twentieth century Woolworths tribe.

"We know so little about the ancient Woolworths stores," he explains, "but we do still know their locations. I thought that if we analysed the sites we could learn more about what life was like in 2008 and how these people went about buying cheap kitchen accessories and discount CDs."

It's good that someone is highlighting the pseudo-science involved in finding mysterious alignments. Actually there are some very simple principles involved in this pseudo-science:

Ignore any sites that don't fit the data
Ignore any differences in age or culture of the sites involved (because obviously all churches were built on ancient pagan sites)

Temple of Bast found

2010-01-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports on the finding of a temple of Bast in Egypt:

The temple is the first trace of the royal quarters of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be revealed in Alexandria.

The find confirms the Greek dynasty of Egyptians continued the worship of ancient animal deities.

The Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt for almost almost 300 years, after the foundation of the city by Alexander the Great in 305BC until Queen Cleopatra was ousted by the Romans.

The temple is 60m (200ft) high and 15m (50ft) wide.

Archaeologists found statues of Bastet, worshipped by the Greek-speaking Egyptians as the moon goddess.

(via William Gibson on Twitter)

Newton, Stukeley and the apple

2010-01-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

The New Scientist reports that the real story of Newton and the apple has been discovered, and was recorded by none other than William Stukeley, archaeologist, vicar, Freemason, and Druid enthusiast.

Squirreled away in the archives of London's Royal Society was a manuscript containing the truth about the apple.The manuscript, from 1752, is a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life written by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton's first biographers. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such:
"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees...he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."
The Royal Society has made the manuscript available today for the first time in a fully interactive digital form on their website.

Temple of Artemis destroyed

2010-01-12T06:03:00.001-08:00

A shopping centre and car park have been built over the remains of a temple of Artemis in Porto Rafti, Greece.

The destruction of the Temple of Aphrodite started only recently. Since I live in the area, I found out about the rescue excavation and visited it three years ago. I noticed the good quality Hellenistic pottery and the strong foundations of the temple. No archaeologist was around, and so I conversed with the two Albanian workers, who explained to me the significance of the project. They also told me that part of the temple was noticed only after the building company started the erection of the modern shopping centre. At the time, I have not taken any photographs, as I know from personal experience that it takes the good part of a decade to uncover a building of that size. I was wrong! When I visited again last month the whole area has been covered under piles of dirt. I searched in vain for traces of ancient materials.

(via Tom Goskar)

Be kind to Neanderthals

2010-01-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

The New Scientist blog asks, Why is 'Neanderthal' still a byword for dumb brute?

The notion that Neanderthals went extinct because they were too dim-witted to compete with humans - an idea now dismissed by most palaeoanthropologists - is finally beginning to lose its currency among the general public. It's about time.

Scientists working in south-western Spain uncovered perforated mollusc shells, some coloured with pigments, in archaeological sites linked to Neanderthals.

Jewellery and cosmetics, the researchers contend, point to a mind capable of symbolic representation and even complex language, once thought only to reside in Homo sapiens.

So, Neanderthals had make-up and art and language (and we also know that they buried their dead); in other words, they were pretty much like us.

San people performed world's oldest ritual

2010-01-11T05:46:00.000-08:00

Apollon: World’s oldest ritual discovered. Worshipped the python 70,000 years ago
A startling archaeological discovery this summer changes our understanding of human history. While, up until now, scholars have largely held that man’s first rituals were carried out over 40, 000 years ago in Europe, it now appears that they were wrong about both the time and place.

Associate Professor Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, can now show that modern humans, Homo sapiens, have performed advanced rituals in Africa for 70,000 years. She has, in other words, discovered mankind’s oldest known ritual.

The San (a branch of the Bushmen) are persecuted in their homelands. Hopefully this news might draw attention to their plight, and how you can help.

ancient lentils

2010-01-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

No, not the ones that Neil from the Young Ones left at the back of the kitchen cupboard: these are really ancient lentils. A 4000-year-old lentil seed found in Turkey on an archaeological dig has germinated, and it is hoped that it will produce a viable plant and more seeds, so that a strain of the plant that has never been cross-bred can be studied.

Ancient seed sprouts plant from the past — Megalithic Portal
A 4,000-year-old lentil seed found during an archeological excavation has germinated, exciting scientists as the event might lead to invaluable data for comparisons between the organic and genetically engineered plants of today. ‘It would be the first seed from very old times whose genes were never modified,’ say the scientists.

Project leader and Dumlupınar University archeology faculty Professor Nejat Bilgen said they found the seeds during an excavation undertaken last year in Kütahya province.

Bilgen said a layer from the container in which they found the seeds was determined to be from the middle bronze age. His team found many seeds, but most had been burnt. They had failed to make the others turn green before the recent success.

“A seed dug from underground and dating back approximately 4,000 years sprouted. The plant that came out of this seed is under examination and will be presented to the scientific community [so they can] make various analyses over it,” Bilgen said.

Future archaeology

2010-01-07T01:01:00.000-08:00

Internet Archaeologists Discover Ancient "Friendster" Civilisation - The Onion (video)

Internet archaeologists stumbled upon the perfectly preserved ruins of an ancient civilisation called "Friendster".

As the person who posted this to the BritArch mailing list pointed out, you can see this happening in the not-too-distant future.

One day, there will also be lunar archaeology, as the perfectly-preserved remains of previous lunar expeditions can be examined by future visitors.

This also reminded me of the classic article about ley-line congestion from 2002.

America's ancient rock art

2009-12-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an article about a magnificent collection of rock art in California.

Everywhere we looked, for a mile or so down canyon, there were images pecked or scratched into the rock faces: stylized human figures in a variety of headgear, stick figures with bows and arrows, dogs or coyotes, bear paws with extra digits, all manner of abstract geometric patterns, zigzags and circles and dots, and hundreds upon hundreds of what looked like bighorn sheep, some small, some larger than life size.

Via Disinformation and catvincent.

Climate change petition

2009-12-17T01:28:00.000-08:00

Copenhagen's last-ditch summit to stop catastrophic global warming is failing; world leaders are appealing for massive public pressure to save it. Sign the giant petition below - it may be the largest in history:

With just 2 days left, the historic Copenhagen climate summit is failing.
World leaders have begun the final hours of direct negotiations. The UK Prime Minister has directly appealed to Avaaz to build the tidal wave of public pressure needed to reach a deal that stops catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees.

Sign the petition for a real deal -- the campaign already has a staggering 11 million supporters -- over the next 48 hours let's make it the largest petition in history! The name of every signer is being read out right now in the summit hall.

We are making history in Copenhagen. A group of young people have sat down in the middle of the summit and begun reading the names of every person who signs the petition for a real deal. Another group is doing the same 'petition reading sit-in' in the Canadian Prime Minister's office, and rumours are that more such actions will happen tomorrow. On an emergency conference call with 3000 Avaaz members today, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said:

"What you're doing through the internet around the world is absolutely crucial to setting the agenda. In the next 48 hours, don't underestimate your effect on the leaders here in Copenhagen"

Earlier, millions watched the Avaaz vigil inside the summit on TV, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu told hundreds of delegates and assembled children:
“We marched in Berlin, and the wall fell.
"We marched for South Africa, and apartheid fell.
"We marched at Copenhagen -- and we WILL get a Real Deal.”
Copenhagen is seeking the biggest mandate in history to stop the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. History will be made in the next 48 hours. How will our children remember this moment? Let's tell them we did all we could.

Save our canals

2009-12-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

URGENT

Inland Waterways Association News Flash

BRITISH WATERWAYS PROPERTY PORTFOLIO

Sign the petition on the Number 10 website

Did you know that over half the population of this country lives within 5 miles of an inland waterway?

You may also know about the media speculation that the Government intends to include the British Waterways’ property portfolio as a component of the £16bn asset sale.

The Government has made no announcements and is steadfastly refusing to be drawn on the subject.

However, we have good reason to believe that Government is seriously considering taking British Waterways’ assets and selling them in a Treasury ‘fire sale’ to raise cash - a decision will be taken in the next few days.

Selling off its assets would mean that BW would be £85 million short of the £120 million it needs to run the canals and waterways of this country.

That will mean inevitable decay and disrepair and will undoubtedly lead to closure as the organisation contracts to preserve a core network- this impact may include the locks and tow path on a canal or river near to you.

I love walking along canals and seeing the narrow boats going up and down. Canals are also wildlife havens. Don't let them fall into disrepair again.

Beaker Folk wisdom

2009-11-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

Her Reverence the Archdruid Eileen has posted a marvellous exposition of how the Christians "stole" the Pagan festivals - including some less well known ones like the feast of the Norse god of hangovers, Bleindin.

January 1 - "The Feast of the Holy Name" was originally a feast dedicated to the Norse god of headaches, Bleindin. Believers would stay in their houses, with the blinds down and the lights off. A day of fasting and silence - the fast only broken by special ceremonial food such as raw egg yolks with Worcestershire sauce, and fry-ups.

Anyone who still thinks that the Christians stole the Pagan festivals would do well to read the excellent book Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton, which carefully examines the evidence for the origins of the modern Pagan festivals. It's a lot more complicated than you think.

It's also worth reading the following articles from the Association of Polytheist Traditions:

Ritual and Festivals

Why reburial won't work

2009-11-13T12:23:00.001-08:00

Some people claim that reburying ancient "pagan" bones is more respectful.

There are several problems with this:

We don't know what burial rites they would have preferred
If you rebury them with their grave-goods, it's very likely that the grave may be looted
Even if we know where and how they were buried, we do not necessarily know if they subscribed to the religious rites according to which they were buried, nor do we know what liturgy was used
We do not know that any ritual we perform for them would be acceptable
We do not know if contemporary Pagan beliefs are similar to Neolithic, Bronze Age, or even Iron Age beliefs
The original site is often no longer available as a burial place
Studying them means we can find out more about them - how they lived, where they were born, what illnesses they had - which is the nearest you can get to reconstructing their actual identity
Scientific techniques that will be available in the future for bone analysis will be better than those available now
If you accept the hypothesis that the bones have some "spirit" residing in them, that spirit might be pleased to be getting all the attention from archaeologists and museum staff
Respect does not automatically equate to reburial - it can also mean remembering the dead
Some cultures believe that once the grave site has been disturbed, it cannot be re-consecrated
There were radically different burial customs in the past - excarnation, display in burial mounds, cremation, and so on - which presumably reflected different beliefs about the body and consciousness (though we can only guess what those beliefs might be by using ethnographic parallels)
Many ancient cultures (e.g. the Egyptians and the Norse) believed that the continuation of the name of the deceased was very important. When the Egyptians wanted to erase someone from history, they removed their name from all the monuments. Reburying the ancient dead resigns them to oblivion once more.
Everyone in modern Britain is descended from ancient people, and no cultural affinity between modern Pagans and ancient people can be proven, so Pagans have no more right than anyone else to say what happens to the bones of ancient people

Protect First Nations' heritage

2009-11-13T05:05:00.001-08:00

An article in the Vancouver Sun points out the shameful neglect and destruction of First Nations' heritage in British Columbia.

In North Cowichan on Vancouver Island, for example, a site on Somenos Creek shows evidence of being occupied since before the pyramids. There are both human remains and remnants of a mysterious structure whose significance still isn't understood but which might be part of some larger complex.

Yet, despite 17 years of requests from local first nations that it be protected and that the owner of the land compensated by the province, Somenos Creek still languishes in land use limbo without formal protection. Renewed requests by Cowichan first nations to discuss the matter have been repeatedly been put off by the province.

Canadians: please write to your MP and ask them to support the private member's bill to protect First Nations heritage.

Prehistoric Oxford

2009-11-09T03:11:00.000-08:00

Archaeologists uncover prehistoric landscape beneath Oxford

Archaeologists excavating the former Radcliffe Infirmary site in Oxford have uncovered evidence of a prehistoric monumental landscape stretching across the gravel terrace between the Thames and Cherwell rivers.

A team from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) has been excavating parts of the 3.7 hectare site. The excavation has revealed evidence of three large prehistoric ‘ring ditches’ along with some evidence of possible associated cremation burials and an enigmatic rectangular enclosure, finds from which are currently being subjected to radio carbon dating.

A triumphal progress

2009-11-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon
Academic approaches to studying magic and the occult: examining scholarship into witchcraft and paganism, ten years after Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon

A collection of essays edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green

Contributions by: Ronald Hutton, Amy Hale, Sabina Magliocco, Dave Green, Henrik Bogdan, Phillip Bernhardt-House, R.A. Priddle, Geoffrey Samuel, Caroline Tully & Dave Evans

Congratulations to all involved in this - it looks great.

Pagans and academics alike should find this anthology useful, as it explores the changes in contemporary Paganism brought about by the publication of Triumph of the Moon - not least among these changes being the abandonment (by the vast majority of Wiccans) of any idea that Wicca is ancient.

Romani ite domum

2009-11-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

A new website has been launched to mark the 1600th anniversary of the end of Roman Britain. There will be digs, conferences, lectures, festivals and exhibitions. Proposed digs include Binchester Fort, Caerleon Fortress, Carr Dyke, Colworth Villa, St Albans, and Vindolanda Fort. There's also a lot of lectures and conferences lined up already. There will also be festivals at Caerleon, St Albans, and Hadrian's Wall.

As you can see from this photo I took on Oxford station in 2007, it's still a live issue...

Life of Brian - Romani ite domum

A quest for identity

2009-10-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

Excellent article about heritage and identity, and how we need to rescue them from the fuddy-duddy image they have in some quarters, because it's creating a vacuum for extremist views.

Madeleine Bunting: The booming interest in archaeology suggests a new quest for identity in a time of rapid change. (Comment is free - The Guardian)

A brave attempt to step into this particular breach and fill it with inspiration for lefties is The Progressive Patriot: A Search for Belonging by Billy Bragg. It's an entertaining and informative read, and I recommend it.

Aubrey Holes update

2009-10-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

I received an email from Mike Parker-Pearson with an update on what is happening with the remains recovered from the Aubrey Holes.

We've now had a chance to assess what more needs doing with analysis of the cremations. There is so much material that the researcher is going to have to write a whole PhD on the assemblage.

That means that we will need a 2-year extension to the MoJ licence (to commence from August 2010).

I will keep you all informed about the progress of work. So far, we have identified the remains as being predominantly adult men with two women and probably two children (though these numbers may well change). Generally they were reasonably healthy in life. A few had osteoarthritis, and one had a benign soft tissue tumour behind the knee.

Please bear in mind with this apparently lengthy work schedule that the bone fragments are very small and it is very painstaking work to properly analyse them. It can't (and shouldn't) be rushed.

The remains will continue to be looked after in Sheffield.

It is my considered opinion that two years (the statutory length of time for studying bones under the new legislation) is not long enough.

Ancestral heritage (guest post)

2009-10-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

A guest post by Anne Griffith Evans, a member of Pagans for Archaeology:

After watching the debate with Nick Griffin on Question Time, I have been trying to crystallise my own views on national identity, the connected concept of ancestral heritage, and the related archaeological record.

As a British Pagan, I wish to understand the ancient past, and the manner of worship in these lands before Christianity. I want to know and honour the gods of my land. But I am not a racist or a right-winger. Like the guy in the audience who spoke up during Question Time (and the Folk against Fascism Facebook group), I do not want my love of my country or its traditional/ancient cultures to be subverted to indicate support for views of the BNP.

In attempting to reclaim my ancestral heritage, am I a racist? Today I saw a 1999 TV programme (Hitler's Search For The Holy Grail) which described how Hitler and his minions undertook archaeological research into the origins of the German 'Volk' and their old myths and gods, to inform what they considered to be their holy war and attempt to purify the Aryan race. Like me, they were searching for their origins to inform their present.

Oh dear.

Have I fallen into a trap? Various people have pointed out the parallel between Pagan reconstructions of the past and fascist attempts to rediscover origins. I wonder if the Nazi rationale explains why some leading Pagan thinkers emphasise the 'neo' part of neo-paganism, as a way of avoiding the entire dialogue about ancient roots and origins?

A quote near the end of 'Holy Grail' points out a non-engagement with the issue of racism by archaeologists, and also points to a way forward for me.

Professor Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge (1999) says that what had to be laid at the door of archaeologists and anthropologists, is that:

"at the end of the Second World War, they didn't sort out the issues of ethnicity. The holocaust was so ghastly that they walked away from the issue and didn't analyse it carefully. That ethnicity, the notion of who a people is, is very much what a people wants to be [my emphasis] and is not to be demonstrated or proved from something deep in prehistory.... Archaeologists were very late in saying this and have only been saying it very recently. Academics did not grasp the nettle with sufficient vigour."

I take the Professor's words to mean that ethnicity is not about genetics or race; it's about collective cultural identity. This makes absolute sense to me, and takes away the stigma of potential accusations that my enthusiasm about heritage is race-related.

Watching the Question Time audience, composed of people of many different ethnic groups (who were collectively though not exclusively against the stance of BNP and Mr Griffin) I was proud to be British and to be one of those opposing the BNP. And I have yet to find examples of racial imperialism in the customs or deities of my pre-Christian ancestors. I like to think I'm out of trouble.

Note: if you feel strongly about the appropriation of Pagan and Heathen symbols by the extreme right, please visit the Heathens against Hate website, which is a long-standing campaign against the misuse of Heathen lore and symbols by fascists.

Pagans for Archaeology is opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia and all other forms of hatred.

Asterix and the Great Debate

2009-10-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

BBC News: Should Asterix hang up his sword?
Recently Asterix had his fiftieth birthday, but the anniversary was overshadowed by the fact that many critics say that the quality of the books has declined since the death of Goscinny in 1977. I thoroughly enjoyed the classic Asterix books as a child.

There are many comments for and against, but this one struck me particularly:

Asterix got me into Roman archaeology, 35 years on I'm a professional archaeologist and profoundly grateful to the little Gaul and to the Belgian neighbour who introduced me to him. She also used them to improve my French, which also proved useful, but the key thing is that they were great fun and the wit grows with you as you reread them at different stages of life - from slapstick to ironic comment on popluar culture.

Martin, Wiltshire

I'd certainly say Asterix contributed to my own interest in the past, along with the novels of Cynthia Harnett, Geoffrey Trease, and Rudyard Kipling.

Archaeological finds

2009-10-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

Temple of Nemesis found (Thaindian News)
Ankara (Turkey), October 13 (ANI): Archaeologists have found traces of a temple built for the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis, during excavations in the ancient city of Agora in the Aegean port city of Izmir in Turkey.
Has a statue of Alexander the Great, dating from Ptolemaic-era Alexandria, been uncovered? Or is it just a statue of a Greek athlete that came to light last May?
A statue of Priapos has been found, possibly coming from an old brothel (Croatian Times)
Croatian fishermen from Baska on Krk Island found an oil lamp in the shape of Priapus two years ago.
Statue of Nero identified (Rogue Classicism)

(via Sannion)

Anthropology and Magic - an interview with Susan Greenwood

2009-10-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

Susan Greenwood is the author of The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness, Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology, and a new book, The Anthropology of Magic. She is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Community Engagement at the University of Sussex.

Pagans for Archaeology interviewed her about her new book.

PfA: What prompted you to write your new book?

When Berg first invited me to write a book on anthropology and magic I didn't initially think much about it as a project, but after a while I realized that as an undergraduate, and as a postgraduate doctoral student, I'd really struggled to find anything that tackled the issue of the experience of magic. Since childhood, I had always felt a sense of magic - the thrill of a thunderstorm, the fascination with being in nature, and the 'make-believe' of creating stories in my head. When I was older I had explored witchcraft and went to university as a mature student to find out more about my magical experiences. During a final year anthropology and sociology project on women's spirituality I realized that I wanted to explore magic through PhD research (this ended up as Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld). During my time of studying I found books that were helpful in some ways but nothing that really dealt with the issues of studying the experience of magic. I wrote The Anthropology of Magic in the hope that it might help students and others to think about magic as an aspect of consciousness - it was the book that I'd wanted when I first started studying anthropology.

PfA: How does it differ from your two previous books?

In my two previous books - Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld, and The Nature of Magic - I took an experiential methodological position regarding magic. In other words, I used myself as part of my research and explored my own magical experiences. This proved to be quite challenging to anthropology due to the preferred position of not 'going native' and maintaining a more distanced approach. My argument was that we are all natives in this type of magical thought - all humans are potentially capable of having magical consciousness and therefore it's appropriate for the fieldworker to have experiences, and write about them too.

In this new book I have taken that argument further and related it to a classical anthropological debate on mystical mentality; and I have also explored the nature of reality in relation to an inspirited world, developing a new methodology of magic from my own experiences, as well as those of others. In the final chapter I have looked to a new attitude towards science as an encompassing framework that can include magic as a legitimate source of knowledge of this inspirited world, rather than reducing it to individual psychology or social effects, as has been common in the past. My aim has always been to stimulate discussion. I hope that it will encourage people to explore magic, as an aspect of their own consciousness.

PfA. What sort of feedback have you had from anthropologists on your "insider" approach to fieldwork?

Initially, it was more difficult. The more rationally-inclined thought that I wasn't distanced enough, or that I hadn't 'returned' properly from the field, or even that I wasn't a 'proper' anthropologist, but I've had overwhelming support from others who have welcomed a more open perspective and have encouraged my work. I think things in academia are changing.

PfA. What sort of feedback have you had from magical practitioners on your "insider" approach to fieldwork? Is there still a "Luhrmann effect"?

I've had very positive feedback from magical practitioners. As an anthropologist rather than an advocate of any particular practice, I've tried to take a critically sympathetic approach and I think that most have recognized that I've tried to create a bridge of understanding between a magical worldview and the rationalizing social science disciplines. When I first started my research in the early 1990s there was a definite 'Luhrmann effect' and it was difficult gaining trust with 'informants', but things have got easier as more people realize what I've been trying to do. I consider myself to be a magical practitioner, and some of my dearest friends are magical practitioners. I see myself as someone who writes about magical consciousness from 'inside' and 'outside'.

PfA. How do you see the "otherworld" in relation to the material world?

For me - and this is a matter of personal opinion - the 'otherworld' is a spirit dimension of the material world. Some would place much more emphasis on a 'supernatural' understanding and the importance of various deities. I value, and work closely with gods and goddesses in my own magical practice, but ultimately I view them as differing manifestations of nature - we are all nature, an inspirited nature. I choose to understand and explain this through the Anglo-Saxon notion of Wyrd, the pulse of spirit that runs through all life. Ultimately, I don't think it matters too much what we call it or how we structure it through our conceptualizations, it's how we feel it that counts. There are many paths that lead to similar human experiences.

PfA. What do you think are the social effects of practising magic?

Well, that depends on what type of magic you are practising. Magic, as an aspect of consciousness, is amoral - it can be employed in many different ways. I would like to think that the effects of people becoming more aware of themselves through 'thinking with the heart', an aspect of magical consciousness, would have a good effect socially. This can have a major effect on how we see ourselves, how we relate to the world around us. I think that developing magical consciousness can help feelings of social alienation by helping us relate to who we are, the places where we live - making connections with a particular tree down the road, or the birds or other wild animals that might visit a garden, or perhaps a particular local landscape. Opening the heart to feel a connection with others might not stop wars initially, but it's a good place to start.

Stolen frescoes to be returned

2009-10-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

The Louvre museum in Paris will return five ancient fresco fragments to Egypt, the French culture ministry has said.

The Egyptians say the Louvre bought the Pharaonic steles in 2000 even though it knew they had been stolen in the 1980s.

This is interesting because it sets a precedent for other artefacts (and possibly human remains), albeit only ones that were looted or stolen.

In my view it only sets a precedent for human remains from other cultures. Archaeologists who dig up ancient British remains have as much claim to descent from those remains as anyone else. However, where indigenous remains from other cultures were looted without the permission of the indigenous people concerned, they should be returned.

In the case of artefacts from other cultures, if they were bought legitimately by the museum in which they reside, then the other country should buy them back. If they were not bought legitimately then they should be returned. In the case of the Elgin Marbles, they were removed when a foreign power was occupying Greece, and should be returned to Greece now that there is a suitable museum for them to reside in.

Talk about Riverside Project research

2009-10-06T00:43:00.000-07:00

Mike Parker-Pearson will be talking at Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes at 7pm on Saturday 10 October about the recent research of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.

You can book a ticket online from Wiltshire Heritage Museum.

Bluestonehenge

2009-10-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

Mike Parker-Pearson has issued a press release about Bluestonehenge, the site near Stonehenge whose existence was leaked on Saturday. (Another version is available from the University of Sheffield.)

The new stone circle is 10m (33 ft) in diameter and was surrounded by a henge – a ditch with an external bank. These standing stones marked the end of the Avenue that leads from the River Avon to Stonehenge, a 1 3/4-mile long (2.8km) processional route constructed at the end of the Stone Age (the Neolithic period). The outer henge around the stones was built around 2400 BC but arrowheads found in the stone circle indicate that the stones were put up as much as 500 years earlier – they were dragged from Wales to Wiltshire 5,000 years ago.

Picture by Peter Dunn

Dugong worship

2009-09-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News: French find prehistoric animal worship site

PARIS (AFP) – French archaeologists have discovered the oldest known place of worship dedicated to the dugong, or sea cow, on an island just north of Dubai, two research centres said Thursday.

The sanctuary, believed to date back to 3,500 to 3,200 years BCE, was discovered on Akab island in the United Arab Emirates, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Dubai.

(Hat tip to Caroline Tully.)

Member numbers rocketing

2009-09-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Facebook page now has 842 fans
The Facebook group has 278 members
The Yahoo group has 30 members

This suggests that people who want to rebury human remains are in a minority amongst Pagans.

New widget

2009-09-29T09:20:00.001-07:00

I have just added a "recommended reading" widget to the sidebar of the blog. Check it out and earn some funds for Pagans for Archaeology!

Human remains at Stonehenge

2009-09-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

The government has issued a response to an e-petition requesting the reburial of remains from the Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge.

Apparently the Ministry of Justice licence for exhuming the bones stipulated that they must be reburied after two years anyway.

Is two years actually long enough for studying human remains? How will the remains be protected from decay once they are returned to the ground? What if better techniques are devised for studying them in the future?

What do we mean by respect?

2009-09-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

We have been discussing the meaning of respect on the Pagans for Archaeology mailing list, and whether the dead have rights. (In international law, the dead do not have rights, but we do have responsibilities to them.)

Nick Ford has written an excellent article clarifying his views on the matter:
Honouring the Ancient Dead': The Care of Elderly Souls and the Rights of Bone Fragments to a Quiet Life. Here's an excerpt:

We know little or nothing about nearly all long-dead people - and generically, what can one say of them? That - just to take one example - the Neolithics are the people who gave us climate change and soil erosion through deforestation and over-grazing? The ones who invented open-cast mining?

I see no necessity at all of according the right to treatment of ancient human remains that demonstrates this assumption that the remains of the long-dead are inherently worthy of the kind of romantic veneration advocated by HAD, but rather a question of its arguable desirability. I do not believe there is an epistemology of positive recognition of the long-dead, whether individually or collectively, and remains do not have rights, even if their deposition was accorded a high profile (often, quite literally) at the time. Has anyone ever heard of a patient suing a hospital for custody of an amputated limb, or a dentist for an extracted tooth? (And this, with an indisputable right of possession of the inanimate by the animate).

Not so far from the truth

2009-09-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

An amusing skit on NewsBiscuit about Stonehenge...

'Stonehenge was to be a place where local merchants and tradesmen could gather, in order to peddle their wares and services to the thousands of Bronze Age tribes people who occupied Salisbury Plain at the time'. The document includes a plan, which shows that originally 600 stalls were to be constructed over a 200 acre site that would have also boasted ample grazing for 3500 Oxen and cart. ‘Stonehenge was essentially going to be the world’s first out of town shopping centre,’ said Dr. Bogaard.

Actually they do think that stone circles were used for trade and politics as well as ritual, so it's not as far-fetched as it sounds. For instance, Arbor Low is located at the meeting point of the boundaries of three tribal lands - so could well have been used for trade and negotiation. Just as churches were used as sanctuaries from the law, a stone circle could have been neutral territory because of its sacredness.

I did like the idea of druids as pharmacists, as well.

Hat-tip to Cariadwen.

Staffordshire hoard

2009-09-24T02:32:00.000-07:00

An amazing hoard of Saxon jewellery and sword fittings of the standard of Sutton Hoo has been found in Staffordshire.

It also made the front page of the BBC website, and there's a BBC article about it:

Experts said the collection of 1,500 gold and silver pieces, which may date back to the 7th Century, was unparalleled in size.

It has been declared treasure by South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh, meaning it belongs to the Crown.

Terry Herbert, who found it on farmland using a metal detector, said it "was what metal detectorists dream of".

It may take more than a year for it to be valued.

There is also a special website devoted to the Staffordshire hoard.

Open Archive

2009-09-18T02:19:00.000-07:00

Open Archive - a new web based system for accessing our past

The wealth of information gathered by local archaeological groups and societies on excavations, surveys and documentary research is one of the important sources of data for the study of archaeology in the UK. Currently, this archive of British archaeology is stored locally, within libraries and local history centres as well as with the originating group themselves. In addition, PhDs and other research can be found in locations often scattered throughout the country. The premise of Open Archive is to collect the records of the past and present and share them with everybody.

Open Archive is an accessible library of user generated reports and publications where archaeology societies, PhD research students, graveyard recording and community groups can share their discoveries with a wide audience.

The easy to use interface combines intuitive searches by period, type of project and location with a map based view showing the location of the selected documents. Each item can then be viewed as either a short description or as the complete publication. This resource creates a public portal to the records of our shared heritage that were previously only available on a few local archaeology group websites OR as paper copies in the local library. The idea is to allow this to be both interactive and open to sharing via feeds and direct data transfer.

This looks like a really great resource, and very usable too.

Neolithic temple found on Orkney

2009-08-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

'Neolithic cathedral built to amaze’ unearthed in Orkney dig - The Times

A huge Neolithic cathedral, unlike anything else which can be seen in Britain, has been found in Orkney.

Archaeologists said that the building would have dwarfed the island’s landmarks from the Stone Age — the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. Nick Card, who is leading the dig at the Ness of Brodgar, said that the cathedral, which would have served the whole of the north of Scotland, would have been constructed to "amaze" and "create a sense of awe" among those who saw it.

It is about 65ft in length and width and would have dominated the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness which stand on either side. These important sites, dating back about 5,000 years, might have actually been peripheral features of Orkney’s Stone Age landscape. Mr Card said: “In effect it is a Neolithic cathedral for the whole of the north of Scotland.”

It seems wrong to call this a "cathedral" which is a specifically Christian word meaning the building that houses a bishop's throne; but nevertheless it is a magnificent and and fascinating discovery. I wonder what could be reconstructed of Neolithic religious practice, if anything.

The Mound Builders

2009-08-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Sinnissippi Mounds were made by a mysterious culture or group of cultures known only as "the Mound-Builders", or the Hopewell tradition, or the Adena Culture.

In his new book about the mounds, Fritz Zimmerman argues that the the Hopewell were Sioux (Dakota and Lakota) along with the kindred tribes of Cherokee and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee). The author explores over 700 mound and earthwork sites in 5 states; it took him eleven winters to complete the project. The book includes photographs of 222 sites and gives directions to the sites.

The Criel Mound in South Charleston,
West Virginia, USA.

A Photographic Essay And Guide To The Adena, Hopewell Sioux And Iroquois Mounds And Earthworks, 1000 B.C. to 500 A.D.
By Fritz Zimmerman
ISBN 978-1-934690-14-7
History / Native American Studies

Tasora Books · August 2009

Available from Itasca Books

The book also argues that the mound-builders had complex mathematical knowledge which enabled them to build the mounds, and hypothesises that we can work out the purpose of the mounds by linking them with the mythology of the Sioux, Iroquois and Cherokee Nations. Whether or not that is the case (I'm a little bit sceptical), this book is still a valuable gazetteer of the mounds, and will doubtless fascinate anyone who is interested in Native American culture.

A sacred mountain

2009-07-31T05:23:00.000-07:00

BBC: In pictures: Kyrgyzstan's sacred mountain

The mountain in Kyrgyzstan has several mosques, tombs, petroglyphs, and sacred caves, and has been held sacred by several different religious traditions.

We are all Africans

2009-07-30T05:09:00.000-07:00

We Are All Africans
All non-African females are descendants of L3 line from Africa, and males have Y chromosome M-168
Nayan Chanda
Businessworld, 21 July 2009

Sweden’s well-known author Lasse Berg often begins his book talk with an attention-getter: “I am glad to see so many Africans in the room”. it invariably makes his (largely blond and Nordic) audience turn around to see where all the Africans are. Of course, Berg means everyone present. The author of Dawn over Kalahari: How Man Became Man proceeds to tell the story of how all humanity emerged out of the so-called dark continent and populated the earth.

The startling 1987 discovery of our common origin by Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann by studying mtDNA (the maternal DNA) from samples dispersed all over the world led Newsweek to run a cover story with an image of an African Adam and Eve. In the ensuing years, massive amounts of genetic research has laid to rest any doubt about our African origin. While all non-African females are descendants of L3 line from Africa, our earliest common father was one with a Y chromosome marker, M-168.

The scientific evidence that we share the same African ancestry has been around for over two decades. Yet, in speaking about this to audiences across four continents, while presenting my book Bound Together I have encountered great surprise, and some scepticism.

Similarly, I read somewhere that about 25% of the European population could be descended from Julius Caesar. We really are all related.

This is not startling to me - it's something I have been aware of for ages - but I guess if you didn't believe in evolution or understand its implications, it might seem startling.

A cover-up?

2009-07-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

Bartholomew's Notes on Religion reports that a section showing early Greek Orthodox Christian priests defacing the Parthenon has been deleted from an animated film of the Parthenon's history after the Greek Orthodox Church complained.

The Parthenon

If there is historical evidence of this defacement (which certainly occurred in other cases where temples were converted to churches, such as the Pantheon in Rome, the temple of Minerva in Assisi, and the church of St Lawrence in Rome) then it should be included in the film. There is no point in trying to airbrush out events after the fact.

Excellent news

2009-07-23T08:36:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to Ronald Hutton, who has been appointed a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Barbara Follett, the Minister for Culture, announced today that Professor Ronald Hutton has been appointed a Commissioner of English Heritage. His term of appointment runs from 1st October 2009 to 30 September 2013.

According to the University of Bristol:

The commission has overall charge of the affairs of the official national body concerned with heritage, and its members act as statutory advisors to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (and so effectively to the government) in all matters that involve the understanding and conservation of England's past. As such, the appointment carries with it a broader responsibility of acting as an advocate for the importance of history in national life. It will commence in October and last for four years with the possibility of renewal.

This is fantastic news, and a well-deserved honour.

Who does PfA represent?

2009-07-23T01:46:00.001-07:00

There is a spectrum of views about archaeology and human remains among Pagans. Paganisms are not dogmatic, so individual Pagans are free to make up their own minds about issues. It is possible to generalise about some Pagan beliefs, but even then one can only safely say, "Most Pagans believe..." (and Pagans are uncomfortable with the word "belief" as it implies dogmatism and an unwillingness to change one's mind in the face of new evidence).

Pagans for Archaeology is a group of people who have signed up to this statement. Whatever I write that is additional to that statement can only be taken as my personal view; it does not represent the views of all members, and certainly not all Pagans. In practice, I find that most members of PfA, and many other Pagans, do agree with the stuff I write; but that cannot be taken for granted unless they have explicitly assented to it.

That is why, when I am asked for the views of Pagans for Archaeology on a particular topic, I write to the members to ask them for their views on it; and when there is a consultation on an archaeological matter, I inform members so that they can respond to it personally.

The other parts of the spectrum are represented by HAD and CoBDO.

CoBDO want all remains reburied after they have been studied.

HAD is an attempt to build a consensus around the issue of human remains. Many of its members want reburial, but they are about compromise and negotiation, and want to be able to perform ritual around the disinterment and re-interment of remains, and to be consulted about museum displays of remains.

Pagans for Archaeology is opposed to reburial (this opposition was part of the statement signed up to by members) but many of its members want to see better displays in museums.

The other aim in setting up PfA was to make links with archaeologists and heritage and help them understand that not all Pagans want reburial and there is a spectrum of opinion, of which CoBDO is definitely not representative.

Great minds think alike

2009-07-22T03:18:00.001-07:00

Since we're on the subject of invented histories, Chas Clifton has posted about Druidry and made-up history. He writes:

It is the "crisis of history" again. Can your religion get respect when it is based on non-existent "history"?

The subsequent discussion in the comments is interesting, too. Actually pretty much all religions have a mythical origin story, but some are more plausible than others. And since Pagans like to think of ourselves as reasonable people, having made-up histories is not consistent with our self-image. Religion doesn't need to have an ancient pedigree to be valid; it's your personal response to the great mystery of existence that matters, and how you live your life, and how you deal with the community (which includes other-than-human people, of course).

"Stolen" festivals?

2009-07-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

I am frequently disappointed by the number of Pagan blogs and websites still banging on about Christians stealing our festivals. In fact, many of the modern Pagan festivals were "retro-engineered" from Christian ones. But in fairness, it must be pointed out that the reason we don't have continuity with ancient paganisms is because they were stamped out by Christianity (though the transition was not always violent, I know).

Although we honour the same deities as the ancient paganisms, there is a lack of continuity between us and them. We do not make sacrifices to propitiate them; and we are also the heirs of Enlightenment science and individualism, and the Romantic movement, and all the other historical events of the intervening centuries, especially the current environmental crisis. We must create a religion for our own contemporary needs, not a quasi-historical re-enactment of an imaginary past.

Admittedly, when people talk about a festival "stolen" from us by the Christians, they are referring back to the (now debunked) scholarship of the fifties and sixties which assumed that Christian festivals were overlaid over ancient pagan ones (which, in the case of Christmas and Hallowe'en, is actually true). So modern scholars need to get their work out there where it will be read by the general public. Ronald Hutton has done an excellent job of this with his books, of course, but he is the exception to the general rule.

The eight festivals celebrated by contemporary Pagans have their roots in ancient practice, but all eight were not celebrated by any one group, and the modern meanings are different. There are some excellent articles on the Association of Polytheist Traditions website debunking some of the claims about festivals.

Samhain myths by Robine Herne (2004)
The Eightfold Wheel of the Year by Alexa Duir (2003)

Of course, many contemporary Pagans have read Ronald Hutton's Stations of the Sun. If you haven't, you should, along with his latest one, The Druids, and The Triumph of the Moon: a history of modern Pagan witchcraft.

The case for retaining human remains

2009-07-20T03:57:00.000-07:00

The case for studying remains

Osteoarchaeology can tell us a great deal about past people, both populations and individuals: what they ate, what diseases they had, where they lived, how far they travelled, what they worked at, where they were born. Putting all this information together for a large number of people gives us a picture of a whole society and the lives of individuals within it.
Associated grave goods can also give us a picture of what mattered to the individual who was buried there. Grave goods should remain with the skeleton where possible, as they are an integral part of the assemblage, and may have been intended to accompany them into the afterlife.
The more knowledge we gain about people of the past, the more it perpetuates their memory. People of the past wanted to be remembered, that's why they built monuments in the landscape. Also, ancient texts such as the Hávamál talk about a person's name living on after they die (another indication that people in the past wanted to be remembered).
There was a lot of ethnic and cultural diversity in the past, and because human remains can tell us where people came from, this prevents fascists from claiming that Britain was ever inhabited solely by one particular ethnic group.

The case for displaying them in museums

Neolithic long-barrows were not private; people interacted ritually with the remains after they had been placed in the mound.
It helps to perpetuate the memory of the dead person.
Museums are Pagan shrines; the name means "temple of the Muses" (okay so the proprietors of the museums may not see it that way, but we can choose to do so).
It helps us to understand their culture and connect with them.
It might help us to come to terms with death.

The case for not reburying

In many cases, the original burial context may have been lost or destroyed. The Zuni (or A:shiwi as they refer to themselves in their own language) people of New Mexico see no point in reburying remains, because disinterring them destroys the sacred context of the original burial
Looters might steal the grave-goods or the bones
We don't know what ritual the dead person might have preferred (though HAD have composed a useful ritual for instances where museums want to rebury ancient pagan remains)
The remains should be stored for future study (analytical techniques are improving all the time)
Reburial means that we will no longer have access to the knowledge and memory of the person, and will quickly forget them
It is difficult to know which group of contemporary Pagans should receive remains for reburial, since we do not have cultural continuity with pagans of the past (who may well have had very different beliefs from us about the soul and the afterlife, and definitely had different practices from us).

A member's response to Arthur's picket

2009-07-20T02:44:00.000-07:00

Another response to Arthur's protest at Stonehenge, from Dianne Green (quoted with permission):

I do not enjoy the new demobcracy which appears to take more notice of a vociferous minority than the quiet majority is my response to the Stonehenge protest by Arthur Pendragon. But those who disagree do need to speak up and this is a useful avenue.

I have been very concerned over the insistence on reburial for some time. I, and those whom I have chatted with, mainly Pagans, think that it is acceptable to display human bones in museum settings, respectfully and in context. The human being has gone on and only a shell remains. This argument also applies to ancient remains, which can give us so much information, now and in the future, about these people. It does gives them some vicarious immortality as their lives may be, partially, reconstructed. I loved the making faces part of Meet the Ancestors.

Pagans do not all believe that same things; that is almost a definition of being pagan; individuality and free thinking. Many share their spiritual beliefs with an great interest in their heritage and do support the archaeologists in their search for knowledge. Ancient remains are not personal; great, great, great great ancestors are within, say, a few hundreds of years. I noticed this recently when I felt uncomfortable about seeing the body of a large pigeon, which it was not practical for me to rebury. (Distance and a bird phobia.) When I went by after a few days the bird had been reduced to a partial skeleton, recognisable as it resembled the carcase of a chicken. This did not bother me; the bird, as a living and dying entity, had gone. Remains were just that, remains. I wonder if our ancestors felt the same. It was acceptable to carry around and deposit bones from times past, generalised ancestors, but a known person could be buried under the house where they had lived or in a grave. We just do not know their beliefes, societal or personal.

Reburial also brings many problems in its wake. Who has to pay, where should the remains be placed, how and by whom should any ceremony be conducted? So far I think that neo Druids have claimed the right to interpret the beliefs of the long dead, but no one knows. If any group were to be preferred over others as instruments of reburial it could cause controversy. Christian ministers have reburied those found in Christian contexts; there are no practitioners around to speak for the long dead and, without their name being intoned, or a familiar language spoken, who can say if the spirit, called back by the energies of reburial, might not linger.

It is a terribly complex topic and rouses many heartfelt passions.

Context: Arthur's 7-month protest at Stonehenge is mainly in response to the excavations of human remains by the Riverside Project, but also about the re-siting of the visitor centre.

See also: My response to the protest

Any common ground?

2009-07-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

There's an excellent article by Dr Corinne Duhig, an osteoarchaeologist and a Pagan, in the latest issue (Summer 2009, number 72) of The Archaeologist, the official organ of the Institute for Archaeologists, in which she cogently makes the case for the diversity of burial practice and afterlife beliefs among both ancient pagans and contemporary Pagans. She too wants to honour the ancestors by telling their stories, which is what osteoarchaeology can do so well.

Oddly, however, whilst the article cites Pagans for Archaeology's interview with Emma Restall Orr, it makes no mention of the fact that Pagans for Archaeology is opposed to reburial (though hopefully our name would give readers of The Archaeologist a big clue).

But it is still an excellent article, and I hope it will contribute to making archaeologists aware that not all Pagans want reburial.

Arthur's protest

2009-07-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

My response to Arthur's protest at Stonehenge

Context: Arthur's 7-month protest at Stonehenge is mainly in response to the excavations of human remains by the Riverside Project, but also about the re-siting of the visitor centre.

English Heritage held a consultation about where to put the new visitor centre and it is a difficult decision because just about everywhere around Stonehenge is archaeologically sensitive. I responded to that consultation, and Arthur could also have done so if he wished (maybe he did, I don't know). The new location was announced in May 2009, and it takes time to build things, so I am not quite sure of the need for that part of Arthur's protest.

Also, as English Heritage is a quango, it is not "the government".

As far as the remains in the Aubrey Holes are concerned, they were removed from their context and jumbled up in the 1930s (according to what Arthur said), so I am not too sure of the need either to retain them for study, or to rebury them. Presumably if they are being retained for study, there must be something that can be learned from them. Apparently they were in excellent condition and are being studied.

I disagree with the automatic assumption that respect means reburial. Osteoarchaeologists do treat remains with respect, and respect can also mean perpetuating the memory of the ancestors.

Also I think people should refrain from saying, "As Pagans we believe..." because Pagans do not all believe the same things.

See also: A member's response and the comments on this post

PFA conference success

2009-07-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Pagans and Archaeology conference at the University of Bristol was a roaring success.

The first paper was delivered by Ronald Hutton, and explored the way in which one generation's archaeological orthodoxy was the next generation's fringe archaeology. Ley-lines were once all the rage with the up-and-coming generation of archaeologists.
Next, Josh Pollard explored the common origins of Paganism and archaeology in the Enlightenment and their shared interest in the past, and asked how better dialogue could be had.
Andy Letcher explored where the concept of Paganism as a fertility religion had come from (a trope that is rapidly losing ground amongst scholars of Pagan Studies, but is still current with some archaeologists).
Will Rathouse surveyed the field of relations between archaeologists and Pagans, from collaboration to conflict.
Graham Harvey explained the animist view of ancestors (which can include other-than-human people as well as human people).
Yvonne Aburrow gave a paper on the different discourses employed by those who want to retain human remains in museums, and those who want to rebury them. There are many discourses involved, but the most striking difference between the two groups was that those who are opposed to reburial are interested in the individual stories of the past and want them to be remembered, whereas those who want reburial are more concerned with a holistic view of the landscape and a timeless past.
Tiffany Jenkins explored how a crisis in the Enlightenment project that underpins the role of museums had opened the door to claims for repatriation and reburial.
Martin Smith explored the ethical issues around human remains, explained some of the fascinating things that can be discovered by scientific analysis of them, and pointed out the highly ethical treatment of bones by osteoarchaeologists.
Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis gave an overview of their Sacred Sites, Contested Rights / Rites project, and explained their response to the Avebury Consultation on human remains.

Afterwards lots of us went to the pub, and then some of us went for a curry.

Heritage protection reform dropped

2009-07-02T05:23:00.000-07:00

The Heritage Protection Bill for England failed to be included in the Government's Draft Legislative Programme for 2009/10 announced in June 2009. This indicates that it is very unlikely to be included in the legislative business of the next Parliamentary session. The Council for British Archaeology are understandably disappointed, though English Heritage has indicated that many of the reforms can go ahead without it.

This legislation would have unified the two separate systems that currently exist and made the process of protecting heritage much simpler and more effective.

Apparently it's been pushed off the agenda by financial reforms.

New toolkit for heritage

2009-07-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

Community Heritage Toolkit Now Live on CAF

A new resource for community archaeology and heritage groups has just
been made available via the CBA's award-winning Community Archaeology
Forum (CAF).

The Community Heritage Toolkit was created by Rosie Crook of Working
Heritage and derives from a workshop titled 'Whose Heritage is it
Anyway?' which was co-organised by the CBA and English Heritage in
Castleford in 2005. The Heritage Toolkit contains numerous step-by-step
suggestions of fun, interesting and affordable ways of engaging groups
and communities with their local heritage, including using oral history
and film, exploring old photographs and even excavating molehills!

The Toolkit, which forms part of the suite of Advice and Guidance pages
available through CAF is just the latest addition to the growing
website. As well as providing advice and signposting visitors to
potential sources of funding, CAF is also a place where groups can
publicise their own projects and activities by creating their own pages.

With 49 projects already listed, ranging in geographical location from
the North of Scotland Archaeological Society and the Unst Archaeological
Group to the St Newlyn East Excavations in Cornwall, this section of the
website is also constantly growing, with recent additions including
pages from the South Somerset Archaeological Research Group, and the Ram
Hill archaeology project in South Gloucestershire. Users can add their
own material to the site after a simple registration process that can be
accessed via CAF's homepage. In addition, there is an email discussion
list for those with an interest in community archaeology, which can also
be joined via the homepage.

The layout of CAF will be modified and improved later in the year, as
part of the intended outcomes of research currently being carried out
into how the CBA can support community archaeology across the UK.
Details of this research can be found at the Community Archaeology
Research page and via the Community Archaeology Support Officer's blog.

Existing projects and resources will be migrated to the new website, so
please don't be put off adding information now if you have something you
wish to tell us.

new ceremonial complex discovered

2009-06-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

Given away by strange, crop-circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project. For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is "completely amazing," said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London.

Archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who was not involved in the find, agreed. The discovery is "remarkable," he said, given the decades of intense archaeological attention to the greater Stonehenge region.

"I think everybody assumed such monument complexes were known about or had already been discovered," added Pollard, a co-leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, which is funded in part by the National Geographic Society.

Happy birthday Rome

2009-04-23T03:22:00.000-07:00

Celebrations of Rome's 2762nd birthday - with lots of fabulous photos (hat-tip to Chas Clifton).

Archaeology in your area

2009-04-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

BAJR have produced a map of where you can find all the local and active fieldwork archaeology societies in Britain (using a Google Maps mashup).

Check it out to find a local society in your area. It's also worth visiting the CBA Community Archaeology Forum, which has pages of information about each group's activity.

The media strikes again

2009-04-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

The Times reports that English Heritage has been subjected to a fly-on-the-wall documentary. As usual, the documentary was squeezed into the mould of a particular narrative structure:

The British television viewer is now addicted to the narrative arc of building programmes: man has dream; man starts work; man is thwarted by human or natural disaster; build goes over budget; build is a year late; man is disillusioned; extra dosh is found; build is miraculously finished!

Actually I expect the British viewer is thoroughly bored of this narrative arc, but we don't get asked.

The article further complains that they spent 7 million pounds on the purchase and re-roofing of a Jacobean mansion. It does have the decency to point out that this is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the billions spent on bailing out the banks. But it's also a mere drop in the ocean compared to the millions wasted on the Olympics by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (of which English Heritage forms a part). The Olympics have never been demonstrated to have any long-term benefits whatsoever, whereas saving our heritage can have lots of benefits — for example, community engagement with the local heritage, as has happened at Tyntesfield and other National Trust properties.

And given the fact that the government is planning to cut pay in the public sector, uttering cries of "the public sector is wasting our money" seem a bit like kicking a man when he's down.

Interview with Emma Restall Orr

2009-04-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

PfA: What is your role in HAD?

ERO: In many ways my role is simply one of co-ordinator, receiving requests or queries and passing them on to those whose expertise or location is more appropriate to the situation. On another level, as founder and the volunteer who has been working longest in the organisation, I am the one who deals primarily with core issues - consultations, conferences and so on - rather than local issues.

PfA: What got you interested in the ancient dead?

ERO: My interest in the dead, death and dying has been lifelong. Though for some it provokes feelings of negativity and pessimism, for me the subject is one that inspires. Here there are often expressions of true courage, generosity, love and appreciation, especially where we pause to one side of the rush of living. So working with the dying and grieving is a part of my daily life as the manager of a natural burial ground. As a Pagan my spirituality further inspires my interest, not just in the circles and cycles of time, of emergence and evanescence, but also in the long flows of human history and ancestry.

PfA: Do you feel a kinship for the people of the past?

ERO: Running immediately on from the previous answer, yes, I feel a profound kinship. I am aware that the ancient dead, no less than those who have lived more recently, provoke in me a deep sense of community, and with it a duty of care. If we think of kinship as blood ties, then I would comfortably say that the chances are that I am indeed related to ancient British dead, but blood isn't everything. There is a profound sense of kinship through community, tribe and landscape - through everything with which we have significant relationships. I feel utterly connected to all those people who have lived on these islands, who sat by the rivers as I do, who watched the skies changing, who grew their food in this mud, who walked the stony tracks that I walk.

PfA: What is your view of human remains?

ERO: As an animist, I perceive and experience human remains as enspirited, in other words, as still humming with the stories of the individual, their community and their landscape. It doesn't matter if the remains are 4000 years old or from the twentieth century, they retain a connection to the living, and thus deserve the consideration of a member of the community to whom they are related - and by 'related', I mean those with whom they have some relational link, whether closely through blood or cultural commonalities, or more broadly through a shared landscape and long history.

PfA: What is HAD's position on retaining human remains for study?

ERO: HAD's position is one that primarily calls for consultation, so that all who have a significant interest in the specific remains in question are given the opportunity to express their views and add to the decision-making about the remains. In this way, those for whom scientific value is key are given an equal standing with those for whom other values are paramount - the spiritual, theological, cultural, social anthropological and so on. On this basis, each case is different, provoking different responses and requiring different consideration. Where there is not adequate contextual information about human remains (and a vast number of such bones are in museum and archaeological stores across Britain) the argument for retention is weaker than where context is clearly documented.

Another key issue for me, however, is the question of the value of what is discovered through study. To take an example, the Natural History Museum in London asserted that the Tasmanian aboriginal culture would, in the future, thank the British scientists for the work they intended to do upon the aboriginal remains, even though the aboriginal repatriation group were expressing no interest in current or future scientific finds. To someone whose conviction in the value of Western science is unshakeable the aboriginal attitude may seem narrow-minded; however, to those whose worldview and values do not depend upon scientific perspectives, the NHM's words can be seen as cultural arrogance expressed through the assertion of what is just another belief system. HAD is keen to ensure that this sort of imbalance is not perpetuated, alternative worldviews and emotional and spiritual values being included as valid criteria, on an equitable footing, in decisions about human remains.

PfA: What do you think about the way human remains are displayed in museums?

ERO: Personally, I find display of human remains in museums problematic, as I know do many Pagans, social anthropologists and others. I would always be happier with casts replacing the original remains, with photographs or graphics being employed where useful and respectful. The visceral experience of feeling connected with remains that have been so isolated from their tribal, environmental and natural context is powerful for me, to the point of being physically nauseating. A part of me always longs to remove the remains, returning them to the mud of the earth to allow them to continue their natural process of dissolving into the cycle of death and transformation.

However, my own view is not that which HAD's collective voice expresses. HAD's Guidance for the Display of Human Remains in Museums is an interesting document, put together in the usual HAD way - through a process of consultation and input from Pagans and museums' staff, finding a way of coherently weaving the different voices into one document that was agreed by all contributors. It is worth having a look at.

PfA: Do you think there is a role for Pagans in archaeology? How do you think the heritage sector should engage with Pagans?

ERO: Absolutely. I think that Pagan perspectives - in all their diversity of theology and philosophy - are important in all areas of life, and not simply from the biased standpoint of being a Pagan myself. Because to the majority of Pagans, heritage, history and landscape are considered sacred, either inherently or indirectly, their position in archaeology has to be of immense value, whether as commentators or as archaeologists themselves. This is particularly so if they are shaking up established views and assumptions. That isn't to dismiss traditional thinking, but provocation to think, to consider more deeply or from alternative perspectives, is enormously valuable and especially within a discipline that is founded on exploration and interpretation - and Pagans are often good at taking that role.

My feeling is that organisations in the heritage sector would (and indeed do) benefit from open and easy discussions with those Pagans who are expressing an interest in the human remains and artefacts in their custody or care. Those museums, archaeological units, and even local historical societies and the like, who have included Pagans in discussion have gained from the input of ideas. After all, Pagans are often the perfect target audience for these bodies: people who are passionate about the past and its place in the present. Their insight can bring a depth and breadth to museum displays, archaeological interpretation and community engagement that would otherwise not be there.

It is a real shame that some heritage organisations have closed ranks against the Pagan community as a whole in response to the reburial requests made by a small Druid group in the West Country. That kind of fearful reaction is wholly unhelpful and is to everyone's detriment - museums, Pagans, and other communities. Thankfully, most organisations are more than happy to do what they can to find the time to listen, to talk, to share.

Witch bottle

2009-04-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

According to Archaeology magazine:

Two corked seventeenth-century wine bottles, one found on a wreck off the coast of the Netherlands, the other in the foundation of a demolished house in England, have yielded strikingly different contents: a rare example of 350-year-old Portuguese wine, and a putrid concoction of urine and hair designed to harm witches who cast spells.

There are a large number of apotropaic deposits on show in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, including a witch-bottle with urine in it. The Archaeology article claims that this is the first time that it has been definitely proven that witch-bottles contained urine. As most of the Museum of Witchcraft ones were found in walls and so on, that can't be the case, surely? (Unless amateur finds don't count...)

There's also a website devoted entirely to apotropaic objects, including shoes, dead cats, horse skulls, apotropaic marks (which I have written about before), written charms and witch-bottles.

Butrint

2009-04-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting article on the BBC website about Butrint.

I've been to Butrint, it's an amazing place.

It's a perfect illustration of the meaning of palimpsest, with ancient Greek, Byzantine and Turkish buildings piled on top of each other.

The BBC article neglects to mention that if you're coming from Corfu, you have to get the boat to Saranda and then a coach down a single-track dirt road to Butrint. And they could do with some planning laws in Saranda and the surrounding countryside, too. The Butrint national park is a lovely bit of landscape, though.

Pagans and Archaeology conference

2009-03-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

Conference – Pagans and Archaeology
Saturday 27th June 2009
jointly organised by the University of Bristol and Pagans for Archaeology

Both contemporary Paganism and Archaeology share common origins in the Enlightenment re-engagement with physical traces of the prehistoric past. However, despite these shared roots, the relationship between Archaeologists and Pagans has often been portrayed as one of limited mutual comprehension and conflict, which may be seen to mimic wider societal tensions in the West between religion and science. The current, heated debate over the treatment of prehistoric human remains is just the latest manifestation of such ‘conflict’.

The aim of this conference is to explore the notion that the common ground between Paganism and Archaeology is greater than the differences, and to see how mutually beneficial opportunities for collaboration and co-operation can be taken forward. Both groups do, after all, respect traces of the prehistoric past, and a growing number of Archaeologists are also practising Pagans. Among the topics covered will be the current controversy surrounding calls for the reburial of prehistoric human remains, the place of Pagan beliefs in the management of ancient landscapes and heritage, and the role of alternative archaeologies. The contributors include members of the Pagan community, archaeologists, historians, scholars of religion and cultural sociologists.

To book a place at this conference, please email ailsa.laxton@bristol.ac.uk

The cost is £25 (£20 for students/unwaged)

Confirmed speakers:

Ronald Hutton
Orthodox and Alternative Archaeology: The Early Years
The relationship between the emerging discipline of professional archaeology and what became regarded as 'fringe' ideas of prehistory in the first half of the 20th century. The basic argument will be that this was more complex and dynamic than has often been thought.

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, and a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs. Also the leading historian of the ritual year in Britain and of contemporary Paganism.

Martin Smith
Balancing interests: making decisions regarding prehistoric human remains.
An exploration of how to balance the interests of multiple groups of people, living and otherwise, in making decisions regarding human remains – including religious groups, the wider public, the individuals whose remains are curated in museums and also of future generations that will come after us.

Martin Smith has a PhD on human skeletal assemblages from Neolithic Britain at the University of Birmingham. Subsequently he worked on a three year postdoctoral research project at Birmingham funded by the Leverhulme Trust. His current position is as Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at Bournemouth University. His research interests encompass a broad range of issues in relation to prehistoric populations as well as the forensic applications of biological anthropology and the archaeology of conflict.

Graham Harvey
Animist Pagans and the present dead
Western modernity arose from a revolutionary process in European culture that hyper-separates humans from everything else (in theory or pretense at least). Two moments mark this long running fictive attempt: Martin Luther's declaration that only internal faith matters in a person's relationship with deity and Rene Descartes' insistence that human mind (the only kind there is) is discontinuous from matter. WIthin the wider separations, Luther explicitly divorces humans from the dead. The term "ancestors" eventually becomes synonymous (in Europe) with absence and mere materiality. Animism - the practice of treating the world as a community of living beings - is a growing trend in Paganism. Relationships with ancestors are being rekindled. This paper ponders how archaeology can be done with respect to ancestors, people who have died and remain present in the world.

Graham Harvey is a Reader in Religious Studies at the Open University. He is the author of numerous books and papers on contemporary Paganisms, animism, indigenous religions, and other religions. He defines "animism" as "the attempt to live respectfully as members of the diverse community of living persons (only some of whom are human) which we call the world or cosmos".

Andy Letcher
Fertile Imaginings: Challenging Popular Conceptions of ‘the Pagan’
A commonplace assumption about the past – reiterated within archaeological, neo-Pagan and popular discourse – is that pre-Christian religion was obsessed with fertility. Agricultural societies, it is said, legitimated licentious and occasionally heinous rituals to ensure both human reproductive success and a productive harvest. A charged word, ‘fertility’ has come to afford paganism a frisson, an ambivalent appeal.

Here I challenge the fertility discourse, arguing that there is scant evidence to support it. Rather, its origins may be traced, in part, to German Romanticism, from where it was widely broadcast in the Anglophone world by Sir James Frazer. Reconfigured in popular culture through the language of psychoanalysis and ethology, it portrays ‘the pagan’ as an expression of an unconscious drive or instinct, abhorrent to positivists, beguiling to Romantics, but always lurking close beneath the veneer of civilization.

Functioning as an origin myth in a post-Darwinian world, such a hetero-normative and universalizing view nevertheless dehumanizes pre-Christian religionists. It disallows them metaphor, play, ribaldry, sex-for-pleasure and transgression, casting them instead as instinct-led automata. ‘The pagan’ must therefore be seen as a category of otherness into which ‘civilization’ has thrown its discontents, a category which only removes us from actual pre-Christian religions. Rejecting this opposition – rather than simply privileging one of other of its terms – necessarily raises questions about how we engage with the pagan past.

Andy Letcher is a freelance writer, lecturer and folk musician living in Oxford. Author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, and many academic papers on paganism, ecology and entheogens, he also fronts psych-folk band Telling the Bees.

His first book, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, is published by Faber & Faber in the UK and by Ecco in the United States. Receiving glowing reviews in both Britain and America it presents a radical, new and definitive history of the magic mushroom.

Yvonne Aburrow
Our silent ancestors: an exploration of responses to human remains and their context
This paper will examine the discourses from which conflicting attitudes to human remains, archaeology and landscape emerge; on the one hand, a 'timeless' and holistic concept of landscape and a view of archaeologists as rationalist scientists, and on the other, a sense of landscape as a historical construct, and of archaeologists as restoring connections with our ancestors, and a range of positions in between.

Yvonne Aburrow is the founder of Pagans for Archaeology, and has an MA in Contemporary Religions and Spirituality from Bath Spa University.

Tiffany Jenkins
Cultivating Claims: the significant role of the museum sector This paper will analyse the rise of Pagan claims-making on human remains and the interaction with the museum profession, demonstrating that prevailing cultural ideas about human remains, and the role of museums, invites new claims-makers. It elucidates the central importance of the response to claims-makers in the construction of problems. The reactions by the profession to these claims are divided into two camps in my analysis. One is a highly positive endorsement and promotion of their claims. The second reaction is from those who not consider Pagan claims-makers legitimate. However, despite considering Pagan claims-makers as illegitimate, contestation of their claims by professionals is relatively weak. Significantly, I argue, members of the sector are unable to mount an effective rationale for the exclusion of Pagan claims-makers due to confusion about the purpose of the museum institution and the basis for its legitimacy.

Tiffany Jenkins is a cultural sociologist. Her PhD, titled The Crisis of Cultural Authority in Museums: Contesting Human Remains in the Collections of Britain, from the University of Kent at Canterbury, examined the social construction of the problem of human remains in museums, with a case study of the rise of Pagan claims-making and the interaction with such groups with the profession.

Will Rathouse
Stormy Heritage: interactions between the contemporary Pagan community and the Heritage industry/Archaeological community

interactions between the contemporary Pagan community and the Heritage industry/Archaeological community
issues uniting these groups such as protection of sacred/ancient sites
issues which divide e.g. the debate over reburial or display of human remains
politics of contemporary Paganism both internally and with the outside world
archaeological ethics and politics
four case studies: Stonehenge, Avebury and the Alexander Keiller Museum, The Hill of Tara and Stanton Moor
future developments, areas for improvement in relations, areas where further research may be advantageous

Will Rathouse is studying for a PhD in archaeology and researching the relationship between Pagans and archaeology.

Josh Pollard
Whither Archaeology?

Joshua Pollard obtained his first degree and PhD at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He subsequently worked for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit as a Project Officer before securing academic posts at the University of Newcastle, Queen's University Belfast and the University of Wales College, Newport. Josh joined the Department in October 2003 as Lecturer in Archaeology. He was Head of Subject for Archaeology & Anthropology between 2006-8.

Although he has published on a range of archaeological topics, much of his research is focused on the British and north-west European Neolithic. The latter has included work on depositional practices, materiality, aspects of monumentality, cultural perceptions of the environment, and approaches to the study of Neolithic settlement and routine.

Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis (authors of Sacred Sites - Contested Rites/Rights)
Stepping stones to common ground: negotiating paganism, archaeology and 'sacred' sites