“The National Secular Society believes that the National Trust and English Heritage have abdicated their clear responsibility to the nation to turn down the requests from the Council of British Druid Orders (CoBDO) an unelected and unaccountable group, for the reburial of ancient human remains at the Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury.”
So say The Secular Society in their response to English Heritage’s public consultation. CoBDO’s claim is of course an absurd assumption, because it is impossible to claim ancestral links that far back. We know little of the funerary practices, use of barrow monuments, or ritual beliefs of the old ‘stone age’ people.
Archaeologists have sparse knowledge from what little evidence remains; that we can look on these monuments and preserve them, and treat ancient old human bones with respect is of course the right way forward, but to tangle the argument with modern day Druidism and its newly found rituals is a foolishness.
Not that any religion or belief system should not be given the respect it is due today, that is not the argument, it is the interference and the supposition on the part of a small group of Druids that they consider they have a right to interpret a past religion.
Science has come a long way forward in understanding human history, through the study of bones we know more about our past. Even archaeologists, whose job it is to ‘delve and dig’ feel that moment of direct connection with the bones of the individuals that they may encounter, here is part of a letter published in the current edition of British Archaeology.
“We don’t know much about the religious beliefs of these people, but know that they wanted to be remembered, their stories, mounds and monuments show this. Their families are long gone, taking all memory with them, and we archaeologists, by bringing them back into the world, are perhaps the nearest they have to kin. We care about them, spending our lives trying to turn their bones back into people. We look at the things they made and used, and, by enjoying the things that they enjoyed, human hands and minds touch over the centuries. Their bones give us direct evidence of who they were, where they came from, how they lived and even what they looked like. The more we know the better we can remember them.”
This surely shows that we all have a common humanity, a respect for the dead, the issue is complex, ancient bones reside in museum showcases and in archaeological storehouses, their fate must be decided by more rational means than a sentimental response, or perhaps more importantly, a modern belief system that wishes to usurp an old belief system that we know nothing about.
Judgment always walks a fine line, the argument has many strands leading to its centre, but it is well to remember that our lives are short lived, our belief systems vanish with the winds, all that is left are the old stones, monuments to a past way of life. Religions on the other hand are balanced on words, the need of humanity to express itself in a different form.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.19819n
The Heritage Journal 
4 comments
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10/04/2009 at 19:45
Ed Hart
With regards to the issue of ‘reburial at Avebury’, this question seems to be cropping up more and more and not just in the most popular of places. Surely no single group can make this decision, no one person can claim kinship to the remains which are found, but respect must be of everyone’s paramount concern. If I had lived in a culture where death & the passing on to possibly what was believed to be a better place was grounded in tradition or such a strong belief system, I would prefer to be left where I was buried or interred. Some people have the luxury to specify where they wish to be buried, or due to their beliefs, a place where they must be. They do not stipulate it should be for at least 500 years, for them surely thay thought it would be forever. Some would say that by allowing access to the remains of ‘ancestors’ we are showing them respect, by allowing all people to see them, or learn from them but what of the hundreds of thousands of ancient remains which are filed in archive boxes, by number, surely this point of view cannot extend to them also. It does not come down to a simple case of religion, be it modern, man made or ancient. It comes down to a sense of respect, dignity and common decency. Just say they wanted to be buried where thay lay, with their family, tools, weapons or animals in a manner that they wanted, or that they were buried with a great war chariot as a great leader who would be honored. Who are we to take that final resting place away from them. (the clue is in the wording – final resting place). I for one wish only to be cremated, not through any particular religious reasons, but simply because I can specify where I wish to be scattered or laid and if I am moved at all it will be naturally, not because in the future someone has chosen to put a road through the grave site and no importance is placed on such remains. For some, these great mounds, banks and ditches were places of honour, what honour do we do these people now?
11/04/2009 at 11:15
Leonora
A very thoughtful comment, to be quite honest when I thought about this two years ago, I had been asked to sign a reburial form for the skeleton of the small child at Avebury, I suddenly visualised all those burial places over the last two thousand years, and saw it was an almost impossible task to undertake. Medieval plague pits in towns, christian, anglo-saxon, prehistoric, where do you begin? In the end it seemed impossible to draw up any kind of presumptive law but to use commonsense and address each case individually, with the respect that we should give to the disturbance of human bones…..
15/04/2009 at 08:19
Derek the Democrat
I see COBoD has added an adendum to their submission which includes the following:
“The location selected for reburial, can be as close to the original site of excavation as possible, but, in more well-known instances, just far away enough as to make detection/removal unlikely, if not impossible, as the exact location would only be known to, and recorded by, local archaeological authorities, and the reburial ceremony would be private and unadvertised, with only trusted members of the druid/pagan community in attendance.
Or, conversely, the reburial ceremony could be a memorial one instead, held in public, and well advertised, but not actually take place at the location of the reburial, but be linked to, or held at, the original site of excavation, in memory of a human being found there, but recently reburied, somewhere in the vicinity.”
No thanks. I object. I am happy for the location of any reburial to be known only to the “archaeological authorities” but I object strongly to it being also divulged to “trusted members of the druid/pagan community” and not me. I have precisely the same rights as them in this matter and precisely the same connection to the remains. COBoD is asking for a status they don’t deserve and for a down-grading of a status which I do.
11/09/2009 at 10:16
archer
this always puzzles me.Druids getting their knickers in a twist over neolithic bones, because they say they are ‘pagan’, yet I’ve never heard one word about any other pagan burial (such as Saxon, viking,early Romano-british.) Druidism wasn’t the religion of the neolithic,and neither that time nor the much later Iron Age was a fluffy hug-a-stone ‘golden age’. Do these people never study any REAL history of the ancient people? Neolithic people were always handling their ancestors’ bones,and moving them about in rituals. They have been known to disinter bodies and perform such rites as smashing the arm bones and removing the skull or mandible. the Avebury child was found in the ditch at a causewayed and had serious medical problems. it’s just as likely that it was a sacrifice as some ‘revered’ burial of a beloved child! (think the child burial at woodhenge,9 child cremations round an Aubrey hole at Stonehenge, the dwarfed and malnourished women buried in the ditches at Avebury and marden.)