Reflections on Intersections of Mortuary Archaeology and Contemporary Society

Growing up in my family, we were taught that education was the solution (or one of the most important solutions) to many problems. So, it is not so surprising that I once believed something that many still believe—that education about archaeology will result in better public understanding of what we do, and some level of agreement vis-à-vis the value of archaeology. After experiencing that this long-held belief (or perhaps more accurately, hope) was not always true, I realized the obvious fact that someone can be educated on a topic and still disagree with you. Education does not guarantee agreement with the educator (see Goldstein and Kintigh 1990 for another discussion of this point regarding human remains and mortuary sites). In other words, there is not a single truth, especially on this topic. This is certainly not to argue against education, it is just a reminder about realities. For this volume, Giles and Williams invited eighteen papers from archaeologists who have struggled with a wide range of topics associated with the intersection of mortuary archaeology, public archaeology, and contemporary society. This intersection provides the space and the opportunity for examination of problems and issues that are often not raised in discussions of archaeology or public archaeology or contemporary society alone. The breadth, depth, and diversity of perspectives presented in this volume are both fascinating and enlightening. The chapters are often self-reflexive and attempt to be fair, looking at multiple sides of very complex issues. Museums, governments, news media, and other archaeologists would be wise to carefully read these papers. As an American archaeologist who conducts archaeology in the USA, I find the case studies especially important and relevant since most of the examples are not constrained by the kinds of post-colonial circumstances that exist in the USA and countries like Australia (this is not to say that there are not other constraints in the case studies). At a minimum, these papers represent a different set of perspectives on problems with which all archaeologists and museum professionals have struggled. The volume is unusual because the authors do not simply state their opinions and present certain facts; they use a variety of tools to try to determine what happened, how public opinion may be measured, and how decisions are made.

‘Tomb to Give Away’: The Significance of Graves and Dead Bodies in Present-Day Austria

Several years ago, my son and I moved into an apartment on the northern fringe of Graz, the capital of Styria, Austria. One day I decided to take a walk in a nearby forest through which a small stream, the Gabriachbach, flows. As I walked along the stream, I noticed in the water coloured glass shards as well as many nicely cut stone blocks. I became increasingly more curious and started to search the stream bed systematically. Picking up more and more artefacts, my collection grew at a great speed and soon the pockets of my trousers and the plastic shopping bag that I happened to have on me started to burst. Among other items, I found a water container, a broken lantern, several small glass bottles, and the fragment of a human long bone. As I gradually moved upstream, I found more worked stones in association with the remains of an iron fence. At that moment the realization dawned upon me that I was standing in the midst of the cleared out and dumped remains from a cemetery. Inquiring about the provenance of the remains, I was told by a friend of mine that they derive from a nearby graveyard, most likely of St Veit, and date to the first half of the twentieth century; he found a gravestone with the inscription ‘1943’. The dumping probably took place at the end of the 1970s since at that time the stream channel had been reconstructed, apparently with stones and other materials deriving from the cemetery. To find myself amidst discarded cemetery remains did not particularly shock me at the time. I assume it is my cultural disposition as an Austrian—we have a reputation for concerning ourselves with death quite happily—not worrying about such types of confrontations with the inevitability of death. I remember feeling a bit sad about all the dead people, their grave stones, flower vases, candle holders, and all the other belongings. My thoughts also went to those who had cared for the graves and who were also long gone. What really stuck in my mind though, is that overwhelming feeling of the futility of any material accomplishment by the dead as well as the lack of remembrance for them.

To Gaze Upon the Dead: The Exhibition of Human Remains as Cultural Practice and Political Process in Scandinavia and the USA

The clattering sound of a child’s shoes across the cold stone floors; the echo is magnificent. I am nine or ten years old and I make my way through the prehistoric exhibition at the National Museum in Copenhagen. The dimly lit display cases are filled with arrowheads, heavy beads of perforated amber, funnel beakers, and bronze artefacts. I reach my goal, the alluring Bronze Age oak cists where the buried men and women from the heaths of Jutland are looking back at me. I touch the glass. My eyes wander over their reddened hair and their clothes, stained in deep shades of peat brown. My eyes seek theirs in the hollow orbits of their skulls. I close mine and imagine a life thousands of years ago. My small hand moves across the glass, leaving an almost invisible trace. Small fingerprints; a dreaming child’s gesture. I would stay there forever, dreaming of the past. Feeling it. I know that it was moments like this, when I could see and feel the humanity of the past that made me want to become an archaeologist. The immediate encounter with an individual from the past is a privileged moment. For a brief moment our destinies cross paths, and hundreds, even thousands of years are transcended. Scenes like this one, of children gazing at the dead and seeing the past, are not unusual. In museums across Europe, the archaeological findings from burials, including both the human remains and the items that accompanied the dead, are often displayed with pride and confidence. The public expects this and is drawn in with fascination to stand face-to-face with the deep past. Beyond this, the display of the dead and of death itself, with all of the allure and drama that accompany it, becomes a privileged locus for pedagogy and communication. But while this confident attitude towards the display of the dead may be typical in Europe, it is not as evident in North America. In North American museums, it is rare to see human remains from archaeological contexts displayed in any form (exception seems to be given to Egyptian mummies, which still are prominently displayed by many institutions that have them among their collections).

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living

In October 2011, graphic images of a blood-stained and dead Muammar Gaddafi were sent around the internet. For some time after his death, his dead body was displayed at a house in Misrat, where masses of people queued to see it. His corpse provided a focus for the Libyan people, as proof that he really was dead and could finally be dominated. When Osama bin Laden was killed by the American military in May that same year, unlike Gaddafi, the body was absent, but the absence was significant. Shortly after he was killed a decision was taken not to show pictures of the dead body and it was buried at sea. The American military appear to have been concerned it would become a physical site for his supporters to congregate, and the photographs used by different sides in a propaganda war. Both cases reflect an aim to control the dead body and associated meanings with the person; that is not unusual: after the Nuremberg trials, the Allied authorities cremated Hermann Göring—who committed suicide prior to his scheduled hanging—so that his grave would not become a place of worship for Nazi sympathizers. These examples should remind us that dead bodies have longer lives than is at first obvious. They are central to rituals of mourning, but beyond this, throughout history, they have also played a role in political battles and provided a—sometimes contested—focus for reconciliation and remembrance. They have political and social capital and are objects with symbolic potential. In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies the anthropologist Katherine Verdery explores the way the dead body has been used in this way and why it is particularly effective. Firstly, she observes, human remains are effective symbolic objects because their meaning is ambiguous; that is whilst their associated meanings are contingent on a number of factors, including the individual and the cultural context, they are not fixed and are open to interpretation and manipulation: ‘Remains are concrete, yet protean; they do not have a single meaning but are open to many different readings’ (Verdery 1999: 28).

Questions Raised in Excavating the Recent Dead

The decision to excavate a modern cemetery in the heart of Copenhagen prompted questions which revealed how the sensitive borderlines surrounding the recent dead are dealt with by archaeologists. When the plans for a new metro line were revealed in Copenhagen, the location of one station within a historic cemetery was controversial. Assistens cemetery is an early example of a landscape, or garden, cemetery (Rugg 1998; Tarlow 2000), designed and ordered according to fashionable contemporary garden principles and aesthetics. It has remained a much-loved place where famous personalities are buried as well as many ordinary citizens of Copenhagen. Although burial within the cemetery has become increasingly rare, it is still in occasional use for new interments and for gardens of remembrance for the burial and disposal of ashes. However, in the 1980s changing municipal plans for the cemetery re-designated large sections of it as a park, as described in Helweg and Linnée Nielsen (2010). This change of status enabled the Copenhagen metro company (Metroselskabet) to consider the placement of a station in one corner of the cemetery. Excavation of this site from 2009 to 2011 resulted in the archaeological recording of the material culture of the cemetery including around one thousand burials, their grave-pits, funerary material culture, and some aspects of the working life of the cemetery (Anthony et al. 2016). Assistens cemetery was originally created in 1760 and later expanded in 1805/6. The excavation focused on the north-west corner of the 1805/6 extension, an area surrounding a cemetery administration building (graverbolig). The area was filled by the mid-nineteenth century and continued to be used intensively for the next hundred years. In the latter part of the twentieth century, coffin burial became less frequent but continued until the 1980s. The occasional placement of cremation urns began in the early twentieth century and continued in large numbers into the 1990s (Helweg and Linnée Nielsen 2010). Burial is now uncommon in the entire cemetery and only takes place in special circumstances. In contrast to UK cemetery regulations, Danish law allows for graves to be removed after only twenty years, so there is the possibility of reusing grave plots after this short period by removing the previous coffins.

Reconstructing Death: The Chariot Burials of Iron Age East Yorkshire

Visitors to the Hull and East Riding Museum used to reach the climax of the Iron Age exhibition, Celtic World, by coming face-to-face with the extraordinary funerary offerings from three chariot burials at Wetwang Slack (Dent 1985). Now removed for urgent conservation, the iron swords from two male burials, their scabbards decorated with intricate, incised Celtic art, and the corroded iron mirror and sealed bronze container from the female burial, were displayed in Perspex cases. Beads of red glass ‘enamel’ adorned both swords and box, and a slender iron pin shone with a thin strip of glowing gold, entwined around a coral bead. These artefacts are marvellous testimonies to Iron Age craft skill, speaking of the repertoire of decorated objects through which power amongst these communities was underpinned and reproduced (Giles 2008). Behind these cases, setting the scene for these personal possessions or funerary gifts, is an oversized image—now the focus of that section of the museum: a reproduction of Peter Connolly’s impressive and moving reconstruction of a chariot burial (Fig. 19.1), loosely modelled on the Kirkburn K5 inhumation (see Stead 1991) and painted in the late 1980s. The image shows a tableau of mourners surrounding a grave, in which has been interred the body of an adult male (Fig. 19.1). He is lying over the wheels of a dismantled chariot, with a shield placed over his chest, and forequarters of pig lain on top. The box of the chariot (still attached to the pole shaft) is being lowered over the body like a coffin, before the grave is back-filled. The participants in this ceremony are predominantly male, with one woman at the edge in an apparent state of grief: two others are in the background, one keeping a pair of children at a distance from the proceedings. Two ponies are being led away from the scene, tossing their heads as if perturbed by the event. Such images have a powerful, instantaneous impact: ‘act[ing] at a distance, across the gallery, in a way a block of text cannot’ (James 1999a: 121).

Covering the Mummies at the Manchester Museum: A Discussion of Authority, Authorship, and Agendas in the Human Remains Debate

From 2006 to 2009, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, UK, was one of the leading institutions promoting the debate surrounding the ethics of preserving and displaying the dead in museums. The discussion in this chapter analyses the activities of Manchester Museum in relation to human remains within the context of a critical assessment of recent developments in museum practice and the continuing cultural significance of the museum. In particular, the discussion will pay particular attention to the omission of any acknowledgement of the individuals responsible for exhibitions and related events, i.e. the authors of its public discourse. Two case studies will be used to illustrate the discussion: the exhibition, Lindow Man: A Bog Body Mystery (2008–9), and the incident of the ‘covering the mummies’ in April 2008 where three of the twelve Egyptian embalmed bodies on display were fully covered, resulting in a public outcry (Jenkins 2011a; Exell 2013a). Both the exhibition and the ‘covering the mummies’ formed part of a series of high-profile activities related to human remains that took place at Manchester Museum at this time. At the time, I was in post as Curator of Egyptology, and this discussion also illustrates the changing role of subject-specialist curators in relation to exhibition production and other aspects of a museum’s public communications (see Farrar 2004). … ‘There are, as far as we know, no a priori reasons for supposing that scientists’ scientific practice is any more rational than that of outsiders.’ (Latour and Woolgar 1986: 29) ‘Another word for “local knowledges” is prejudice.’ (Sokal 2008: 108)… Working on the public consultation process during the period 2008–10 for the new archaeology and ancient Egypt galleries at Manchester Museum, opened as the Ancient Worlds galleries in October 2012, the general lack of understanding of the exhibition and gallery development process amongst museum visitors became evident. From discussions with participants in the various consultation events (Exell and Lord 2008; Exell 2013a,b), it emerged that people in the institution either regarded the decision-making process as being the sole responsibility of the most relevant subject-specialist curator, or somehow the result of a monolithic and neutral institutional mind (Arnold 1998: 191).

Writing About Death, Mourning, and Emotion: Archaeology, Imagination, and Creativity

Imagination has informed ‘the writing of the past’ since the birth of European antiquarianism. However, the prominence and reputation of the archaeological imagination has fluctuated greatly through time. Both a product of its times and a force for change, the archaeological imagination has been variously central to the discipline, marginalized, and ridiculed. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, antiquarians such as John Leland, John Aubrey, and William Stukeley referenced druids, proto-Christianity, and classical Rome to creatively people England’s past, producing past worlds that ‘made sense’ in the context of the nationalist politics and religious mores of the time (Daniel 1981; Piggott 1985; Trigger 1989). By contrast, the tendency towards empirical study squeezed imagination to the margins of mid-twentieth-century processual archaeology (Hodder 1989). This chapter picks up some threads of the story of archaeological imagination as it has been ‘written’ during the last few decades, as well as reflecting on some opportunities for the future, specifically in the study of death, mourning, and emotion. In recent years, many archaeologists have experimented with different styles of writing in an attempt to give faces and voices to people in the past. For example, Mark Edmonds (1999) wrote imaginative vignettes of life in Neolithic Britain, while Ruth Tringham (1991) evoked the drama and emotion surrounding the death of people and the burning of houses in Neolithic south-east Europe. These attempts to ‘people the past’ were, at the time, complemented by multi-vocal narratives that sought to give voice to different contemporary interpreters of the past, such as Barbara Bender’s collaborative work on Stonehenge and Leskernick (Bender 1998; Bender et al. 1997). These bodies of work encourage us to think critically about the process ofwriting the past and the ‘will to truth’ in our stories. We are also invited to ask who is writing, whose voices are heard, what types of language are being used, and to what effect. These genres also question the type of past that we wish to write. Narratives may be variously based on power and politics (Parker Pearson and Richards 1999), emotion and bereavement (Tarlow 1999, 2000, 2012), action and performance (Pearson and Shanks 1991; Shanks 2012), material culture and identity (Thomas 1996).

Museum Practice and the Display of Human Remains

Visitors to the Lawrence Room, Girton College, Cambridge University, on Thursday afternoons (when the small one room museum is open to the public) will find a dead body on display. The body is that of an Egyptian mummy from the Coptic period with a painted face mask and inscription ‘Hermione Grammatike’. It was this inscription that attracted Girton College to acquire this ancient body. A loose translation suggests this was a woman scholar, and therefore the first recorded woman scholar in history and as such an appropriate ‘mascot’ for one of the early great champions for formal female education. The mummy was purchased from Egyptologist Flinders Petrie who had excavated it in 1910–11 (Imogen Gunn and Dorothy Thompson, pers. comm.). The case of Hermione is both particular and general. Across all of the UK and indeed the Western world, human remains from all ages and all parts of the world can be found in all types of museums of all sizes apparently isolated and insulated from society’s normal relationships with the dead: grief, morbidity, respect, invisibility. Context would appear to be everything in terms of attitudes to the display of the human dead. This paper reviews this concept of context, and offers some commentary on the origins, constraints, and boundaries for the display of human remains. To begin with an Egyptian mummy as an example is also appropriate, as this particular category has an almost ubiquitous and overpowering place in Western museums. It has been accepted practice to include human remains in displays since the widespread establishment of public museums in the nineteenth century. These are normally associated with archaeological discoveries but can also be found in physical and social anthropological displays, medical and history of medicine displays, and occasionally in other contexts. Museum practice is very much a creation of Western, primarily Enlightenment, values and the inclusion of human remains in displays can be traced in these values (for example, the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and the public anatomy demonstrations of the nascent Royal Society in London) and in the Christian European culture from which this derived (for example, the display in churches of saints’ relics: Weiss-Krejci this volume).

Bones Without Barriers: The Social Impact of Digging the Dead

The excavation of human remains is one of the most contentious issues facing global archaeologies today. However, while there are numerous discussions of the ethics and politics of displaying the dead in museums, and many academic studies addressing the repatriation and reburial of human remains, there has been little consideration of the practice of digging up human remains itself (but see Kirk and Start 1999; Williams and Williams 2007). This chapter will investigate the impact of digging the dead within a specific community in Oakington, Cambridgeshire, during the excavation of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery in 2010 and 2011. The analysis of impact was enabled by applying a double-stranded methodology of collecting quantitative and qualitative social data within a public archaeology project. This aimed to explore the complexity of local people’s response to the excavation of ancient skeletal material. These results will provide a starting point to discuss the wider argument about screening excavation projects (see also Foreword this volume; Pearson and Jeffs this volume). It is argued that those barriers, rather than displaying ‘sensitivity’ to local people’s concerns, impede the educational and scientific values of excavation to local communities, and fosters alienation and misunderstandings between archaeologists and the public. The professionalization of British archaeology has taken place within Protestant modernity, and we will argue that it is this context which drives the desire to screen off human remains from within the industry, rather than the need to protect the public or the dead from one another. In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, it is a condition of the Ministry of Justice licence to remove human remains that modern excavation is screened from public gaze. For many projects, particularly those carried out in an urban or public context, this condition manifests as the erection of barriers to block lines of sight. However, this has not always been standard practice. Archaeological projects have often involved a public engagement element, even before public archaeology was formally recognized. Large excavation projects, such as Whithorn, a Scottish project carried out in the late 1980s, included a viewing platform so members of the visiting public could see the excavation, including burials, from the edge of the trench (Rick Peterson, pers. comm.).