Recently I have been questioning where archaeologists have to respect the wishes of others when it comes to digging up dead bodies. Although I may profess to be an agnostic, practically speaking I am an atheist and I don’t believe in any kind of soul or the sanctity of the dead; to me the dead have no rights. However, the living do and if it is a core and fundamental belief a living person holds that to disturb the dead is to disturb the dead’s soul then excavation is impinging on the living. Fundamentally then there is a conflict of interest between scientific enquiry/preservation heritage and the moral objections of the living. In the past if it wasn’t white and Christian then it was fair game; but I guess that was in the days when all archaeologists were white and Christian. Of course, modern Christians are actually the least likely to make a fuss; most believe that god will reconstruct the body at the resurrection, so the actual physical state of it is of no consequence (although the medieval Christian that is getting dug up probably did believe in a physical resurrection). Churches frequently used to dig up their cemeteries and put all the jumbled bones in one big pit so that new burials could be made. I recently helped excavate over two hundred bodies from a cathedral that was having an extension built. We promised to bury them somewhere else once we had done our tests and not a single objection was raised. However, Muslim and (especially) Jewish burials are a different matter entirely and we frequently have restrictions imposed upon us. In recent times indigenous societies in the New World have been particularly successful in getting anatomical collections returned and stopping archaeologists excavating, even if a burial site is going to be immanently destroyed by natural processes. To these claims I am sympathetic, but often I get the impression it is more about asserting an ethnic identity rather than protecting religious beliefs. In these cases I have mentioned above it seems that the moral objections of the living should take precedents. However, there are clearly some absurdities. When people are laying claim to skeletons 5,000, 10,000 and even 30,000 years old things seem ridiculous. They have no way of knowing about the personal beliefs of the dead that long ago. Also, some religious groups claim moral rights to dead that have nothing to do with them at all. Neo-pagans are particularly notorious for this. Arguably the discipline of archaeology itself is older than most Neo-pagan religions, let alone the bodies and monuments they try to protect! Where do we draw the line? What is the burden of proof that the living have to bring to lay a claim to a body: solid evidence; likely hood; suspicion; a mere belief? Is the burden of proof on the archaeologist to prove that they don’t have a claim? Does knowledge of humanity’s past ever take precedents over the beliefs of the few? Jonathon Smith http://www.geocities.com/archchaos1/index.htm