Cultural continuity?

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.

Interview with Mike Parker-Pearson

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.

Couldn't have put it better myself

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

Pagan festivals

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.

Guest post by Bo: Let the dead bury the dead

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

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.

Hypatia of Alexandria

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.

Pagan census initiative

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

Black Dog: an interview with David Waldron

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!

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

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?

A triumphal progress

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.

Ancestral heritage (guest post)

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.

Anthropology and Magic - an interview with Susan Greenwood

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.

Great minds think alike

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?

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

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

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?

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.

PFA conference success

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.