Write to your MP

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

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

Manchester Museum conference on restitution

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.

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.

PhD studentship

'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.

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?

Stolen frescoes to be returned

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.

A cover-up?

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.

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).

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.

Education and research

There's a great article by Tiffany Jenkins over at spiked, British museums: the Druids are at the gates, which points out that:

Such a seemingly eccentric controversy, sparked by some Druids, ancient skeletons and cultural institutions, is more significant than it is funny. This fight over old bones is a revealing snapshot of the state of museums and the problems they will continue to face in their role as places of research and education as a consequence of the trends that members of the sector have helped set in motion.

These trends have been set in motion by museums for two reasons:

the code of ethics of the Museum Association, the professional body for the sector, argues that museums should be a places that consult and involve communities, users and supporters. It states that institutions should: ‘Consult and involve groups from communities they serve and their representatives to promote a sense of shared ownership in the work of the museum.’ The code also argues that institutions should, ‘recognise that individuals or communities may have a stronger claim to certain items than the museum’.

and...

Until they can make a clear defence of the importance of education and research, museums will remain buried in endless consultations about old bones.

Museums could also argue, as Pagans for Archaeology does, that they should be 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.

Last chance to air your views

The Avebury reburial consultation closes this week, so if you haven't already responded, now is the time to do so.  Go to the English Heritage site and fill in the questionnaire.  The closing date is 31 January.

Save the archives

Jason at the Wild Hunt blog reports on the impending dispersal of the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature at the University of London, which the university proposes to sell in order to raise funds. There's an article in The Independent, which reports that students are lobbying their colleges for financial contributions. Unfortunately it does not explain how to go about lobbying your college for financial contributions.

This is important because these texts reveal past understandings of magic and mystery, and how occult thought has developed. They should at least digitise the archive before selling the books.

Museum usability

I've blogged before about museum usability.

Basically, the problem is with the way many museums 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.

A quick Google search reveals that many museums are concerned about web accessibility and physical access for wheelchair users (and rightly so) but many museums appear to have completely overlooked this problem of captioning.

Obviously, objects must have an accession number, but the problem of captions for visitors is different.

An additional problem is that different audiences want different information about objects. Personally, I find the social context of objects interesting. Others might be looking at them from an art history perspective, or a comparative culture perspective, or some other perspective.

Here's an example of a display case that is accessible for dyslexia (it's from the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford). Note how the labels and descriptions are next to the objects (no cross-referencing required):


How not to do it (this is an imaginary display that I have constructed of objects from the Science Museum):

1	2
3	4

1. Theodolite, mid 18th century.
2. Original orrery planetary model by John Rowley, 1712-1713
3. Electrical chimes
4. Plate electrical machine, 1770.
   

Annoying, isn't it? Now imagine having to do that hundreds of times over while viewing numbered display cases.

Property is theft

Iraqi National Museum Deputy Director Mushin Hasan holds his head in his hands as he surveys the debris of looted and destroyed artifacts. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty

The current issue of Archaeology (a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America) has an article about looted antiquities. It is a review of a book by James Cuno about museums' acquisition of archaeological finds. The author of the book, who is from an art museum background, argues that placing objects from different cultures alongside each other in museums can give people a basis for comparison. Seems reasonable... until you realise that this involves the objects being taken completely out of their social and cultural context. Cuno uses this seemingly reasonable starting point to say that the UNESCO legislation enacted around the world have failed to stop looting and have succeeded only in inhibiting the global movement of art. He further argues that UNESCO has impoverished our understanding of one another and contributed to a stale, narrowly nationalistic view of culture.

But once you remove an object from its cultural and social context, it has little or no meaning; Roger Attwood says:

The information given by a prisoner while he is being tortured is unreliable. So is the information given by a looted antiquity; it has been wrenched from its archaeological context and stripped of its basic history. In certain instances, even its authenticity cannot be definitively ascertained.

Cuno claims that looting of antiquities is fuelled by poverty and war; but Attwood points out that Italy has a big problem with looters, and it is one of the richest countries in the world - so what is fuelling the looting is the existence of a market for the stolen items. What's more, says Attwood, much of that market is museums, and the museums act as trend-setters for collectors, who then donate their illicit antiquities to museums in exchange for tax breaks.

Cuno also says:

"If undocumented antiquities are the result of looted (and thus destroyed) archaeological sites, that there is still a market for them anywhere is a problem. Keeping them from U.S. art museums is not a solution, only a diversion."

So he is effectively saying that people steal stuff, so we might as well buy it off them. That reminds me of the humorous saying: "Property is theft; theft is property; therefore it's mine."

The laws that are in place are there to protect ancient sites from looters. Once an item is looted and removed from its context, its ability to tell us anything about the culture it came from is severely curtailed. (Oddly, human bones with doubtful provenance can still be used to provide data on their population of origin, since they have minerals in them which can identify where they came from; but more information can be gleaned from them if they have a provenance.)

As an example of what happens when the context of an object is lost, consider the Mediterranean pottery found at Tintagel. This pottery tells us that there were trade links between the Mediterranean and North Cornwall in the "Arthurian" period (6th century CE), which means that Tintagel is a site of international importance. If the information that it came from Tintagel was lost, it would become just another bunch of pot-sherds, and Tintagel would be correspondingly greatly diminished.

Another (hypothetical) example: if a votive statue of Mercury was found in a Roman temple, that would tell you the dedication of that temple; or if it was found in a Roman house, perhaps buried in a wall cavity with coins of a certain date, it might provide evidence of paganism continuing into the Christian era; but if it was just dug out of the ground and this contextual information was lost, we would not know of the temple dedication or the existence of clandestine paganism.

Of course, the majority of items in museums have a respectable provenance. But museums and archaeology should maintain squeaky-clean procedures for the acquisition of antiquities, otherwise it undermines their authority in these matters.

Further reading

• Saving Antiquities For Everyone (SAFE): James Cuno's Illogic
• Archaeology: Insider: Guardians of Antiquity?
  
• Looting matters: James Cuno on Antiquities
• Afrikanet: Review of James Cuno’s Who Owns Antiquity? by Dr. Kwame Opoku
• Roger Atwood (2004), Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World.
• C & G Scarre (2006), The ethics of archaeology: philosophical perspectives on archaeological practice