‘Excavated Human Remains Should Always Be Reburied’. How Far Do You Agree?
‘Excavated human remains should always be reburied’. How far do you agree?
The topic of human remains has been argued over for many years and has resulted in multiple changes to the laws of reburial in the past sixty years, but now the laws are that archaeologists can have up to 3 years to research the remains until they should be reburied unless they need to extend their research. Archaeologists have always been fighting to stop reburial to have more time to research them or display them in museums whereas groups such as Neo-Druids have said that burials should never be buried in the first place. But although it is respectful to rebury them, there have been situations where valuable research has been lost such as with Kennewick man.
This situation is a good example of how reburial has been controversial, resulting in much lost information about some of the first people in North America. It was found that it could have been up to 9000 years old making it the oldest skeleton retrieved from the continent but only a limited amount of research was carried out due to Native Americans claiming that it was an ancestor of them and that they believed that he should be reburied with the correct funerary rites even though DNA evidence showed no link between it and the natives. The case went to court and resulted in the remains being kept in storage but not being allowed to be studied by archaeologists but the Native Americans were allowed to perform some rites.
But due to certain laws in the UK, these problems do not happen this was but there are still many arguments surrounding reburial. Neo-Druid groups are known to stand up for the reburial of human remains claiming that it is disrespectful to excavate remains and that it is against pagan burial laws. But some dismiss this idea because the Neo-Druids today probably have very little in common with the beliefs of druids in the pre-history as we still know very little of the rituals and rites. So if remains that have
The topic of human remains has been argued over for many years and has resulted in multiple changes to the laws of reburial in the past sixty years, but now the laws are that archaeologists can have up to 3 years to research the remains until they should be reburied unless they need to extend their research. Archaeologists have always been fighting to stop reburial to have more time to research them or display them in museums whereas groups such as Neo-Druids have said that burials should never be buried in the first place. But although it is respectful to rebury them, there have been situations where valuable research has been lost such as with Kennewick man.
This situation is a good example of how reburial has been controversial, resulting in much lost information about some of the first people in North America. It was found that it could have been up to 9000 years old making it the oldest skeleton retrieved from the continent but only a limited amount of research was carried out due to Native Americans claiming that it was an ancestor of them and that they believed that he should be reburied with the correct funerary rites even though DNA evidence showed no link between it and the natives. The case went to court and resulted in the remains being kept in storage but not being allowed to be studied by archaeologists but the Native Americans were allowed to perform some rites.
But due to certain laws in the UK, these problems do not happen this was but there are still many arguments surrounding reburial. Neo-Druid groups are known to stand up for the reburial of human remains claiming that it is disrespectful to excavate remains and that it is against pagan burial laws. But some dismiss this idea because the Neo-Druids today probably have very little in common with the beliefs of druids in the pre-history as we still know very little of the rituals and rites. So if remains that have