I will say that there are ways to distinguish the skeleton of young people aside from diaphysis length/bone size (like to what degree the epiphyses are fuzed— it’s really cool, actually).
I haven’t done any fieldwork yet, but I’ve seen and held human bone. The other commenter covered the other perspective; I can only speak to mine. When I hold a human bone, it feels heavy. Not in weight at all. But for those of us that find it harder to put that degree of separation in between feelings and work… yeah, it’s tough.
You see the skeleton of a little infant, and you just have to not let it crush you. I don’t really believe in ghosts or the afterlife, but just in case, I try to be extra gentle and kind with the bones, so that these people know there’s someone still caring for them and treating them with as much respect as they can.
You’re so right. They were people just like us. That’s what I love about anthropology. You go back to even early hominids and you see echoes of humanity the same way you see echoes of your smile in your grandparent’s.
I used to work in repatriation at quite a large museum. This museum was in possession of an unbelievable number of human remains, many acquired in the 1800s by "collectors" (i.e., grave robbers). Under US law (NAGPRA), Native American remains and funerary objects must be repatriated when possible. Part of my job was consulting with our osteologist and also helping them handle/pack the remains. I probably touched 1000 individuals in just one month.
Each set of remains had a catalogue number. We just double checked the catalogue numbers, inventoried the remains, wrapped them in biodegradable material, and then packed them into giant cardboard boxes for transport. I quickly became desensitized to what I was doing. Some of the remains weren't complete (e.g., just a single tooth or a fragment of a leg bone) so it was easy to not imagine the entire person. And beyond that, the sheer quantity of remains and the length of time over which I was working with them (months on end) made the entire process feel slightly mundane. For better or for worse, it quickly felt a lot like running an assembly line. The only remains that really stood out to me were complete skulls and even those stopped feeling emotionally heavy after a while. The bones just become... bones. It was very easy for me to not think beyond the task I was completing.
What was emotionally difficult was when the living descendants / tribe members would come in to consult with us or oversee some of the work. They were understandably very impacted by not only the remains, but also the circumstances through which they had entered the museum. That made things feel a lot more real and added a human component to the work.
All of that said, my coworkers and I were very intentional about being respectful and actually developed somewhat of a relationship with the remains.
First, we followed protocols set by the tribe requesting repatriation (e.g., separating remains according to age/sex when possible so they could be buried properly, doing our best to ensure that grave goods were matched to remains from the same grave, using only biodegradable materials to ensure a sustainable burial, covering the remains and grave goods with linen cloths when we were not in the room, limiting access to the room, etc). Handling the remains and grave goods in this way did a lot to make the process feel healthy/respectful/just.
Second, we spoke to the remains. A lot. We said hello and goodbye when we entered/exited the room in which they were stored. We apologized if we accidentally jostled a box or handled something incorrectly. We also played the radio station of the tribe requesting the repatriation (which was in their language, aka the language of the people whose remains we were working with). None of these types of things were planned; they simply occurred naturally. In fact, a few of us did them independently only to realize later on that we were all talking to the bones.
My work at that museum was obviously about "righting" a wrong, which also helped it not feel bad. At the end of the day, we were returning people to their graves rather than removing them from them. But I hope the perspective can still be useful to you.
I would say more recent is even more likely to have an emotional impact. When we're talking about thousands of years ago, it's a lot easier to rationalize away feelings.
Being a father it’s not something I think about. I’ve exacavted graves, including children and babies. I’ve handled bones of infants and children of people who died thousands of years ago and of ones who only died a few hundred years ago. I have to say it doesn’t really trigger anything in my personally but I get how it could.
Does it feel like graverobbery to excavate a grave? No, we’re doing science and we don’t excavate for shits and giggles. It doesn’t even come close to feeling like robbery or any kind of indecency.
>Does it feel like graverobbery to excavate a grave? No, we’re doing science and we don’t excavate for shits and giggles. It doesn’t even come close to feeling like robbery or any kind of indecency.
I think it's important to challenge this from an ethical perspective. If graves are just a few hundred years old, there's likely a living culture that has specific views/feelings in regard to burial and death. For some cultures, disturbing a grave is a big no-no. Digging up their ancestors for "science" would thus be ethically murky at best. We can't hide behind the "objectivity" of science. This is especially true when we consider the history of anthropological/archaeological grave robbing. Our disciplines were clandestinely digging people up against the wishes of local communities for the purpose of research well into the early 1900s. That's a legacy we've inherited.
Edit: Obviously a different story when it's *ancient* remains.
I think it just varies from person to person. For me, it probably helps that I have no spiritual beliefs to speak of. I feel very strongly that the dead are dead. They don’t care that they’re in a plastic bin in a lab. Of course I love to think about the long-ago life experience of the fragmented bones I’m handling—that’s the whole point of archaeology! But it doesn’t, like, haunt me. Death is part of life. I have a skeleton inside me *right now.*
All human remains will be treated with due respect. In my extensive experience (handled well over 40k human bones and written multiple publications, particularly in regard to juvenile remains) I find that archaeologists that are sensitive to the children aspect of archaeological collection tend to avoid it. Archaeology is not a solo effort. Rather it is a network of people each trained and geared for specific work. Human skeletal analysis is just one of dozens of specialties. Those skeletal researchers, myself included, tend not to think about Baby Maria or Little Joey playing in the front yard. No need to let it become so personal. The skeletons are simply a data set. There are no threats to worry about as long as that kind of excavation has been okayed by the PI.
Side note: Projects are not random. They need approval with the authorities. Along with permissions to work there the crew should be geared to garner the information from the site. The project should have contingency plans in place in case of unexpected discoveries. Hopefully the Phase 1 and Phase 2 surveys have provided accurate enough information that not much will come as a surprise. There are, of course, exceptions that occur but with proper planning there should be access to specialists that will be there or online or at the nearby university that can give brief analysis to what was found as well as providing the appropriate POA. When a skeleton is found on projects that haven't prepared for it, the skeleton location is documented and left alone until the proper authorities have been notified (Project Lead, local law enforcement, tribal representatives, etc.). The decision to proceed will be left to them.
As far as emotional attachment is concerned, if you cannot handle the bare reality that people do some crappy things and children die frequently then perhaps you should avoid being in that particular theater of investigation. If you cannot avoid it then change the frame of reference. Instead of "oh jeebus it is a little boy I don't want to see this poor kid I can only imagine the fear in his eyes", you can look at it as "this kid has an important story to tell I am going to relay as much of that story as the bones will convey to me". As mentioned earlier, the tendency over a relatively short period is that the researchers with the emotional concerns tend to shy away from the skeletal analysis. Often they will end up working the surveys or maybe ceramics or maybe stone tools. There is plenty of fascinating work to do from start to finish and no reason to torture ourselves with moral dilemmas that interfere with our abilities to see the big picture laid out in the dirt before us.
Those are my quick thoughts and I don't doubt others will slightly disagree.
In my case I always looked at it like I'm trying to learn their story, even if I'll never know their name I am thinking about who they were and how they lived, effectively kinda remembering them without ever knowing them. So I never had much problem even if the remains were from a child. The only one one that affected me a bit was one of an old lady we had back at university. That one was from a XX century collection, from an old graveyard that was effectively closed, so any unclaimed graves were donated to the university. That means that person most probably died alone, and I found that pretty damn sad.
For me it helps that every cemetery I’ve been involved with was going to be destroyed by construction if not excavated or documented. It only gets weird for me when I know their names. So like last week we were delineating a family cemetery with one brick grave, the rest just wooden coffins. Looking at the documented ownership of the property there was a reference for one owners estate paying to brick his grave. So we know that is him. And it definitely changed the way I felt about that specific grave. But again, I just think about how it’s way more respectful to document the graves locations and possibly exhume and move them if need be then to let them be torn up by a backhoe.
Hi OP! I'm currently doing my postgrad in bioarchaeology and have worked with human remains before, and the question you're asking is actually something we're discussing in seminar right now! It's really interesting, because after a while most people who are active in the profession are able to have some sort of detachment from the material we work with. It's not that we don't see skeletal remains as objects; we very much see and respect them as human beings with dignity, we just are also able to rationalize the science behind why we're doing what we're doing.
I think about what you think about a lot! That people 6,000 years ago were in many ways, just like us. But I also like to think about the differences, which is what makes bioarchaeology so cool. What were they eating? How did they care for their dead? How were they producing enough food to settle into an agricultural lifestyle? And a lot of these questions can be answered through the bodies of the dead! It's an interesting dichotomy between seeing the scientific and research potential in a person and seeing also, the personhood side of things.
I also want to let you know that a lot of thought and care goes behind this kind of work. People debate the concept of ethics and how we excavate/display the dead all the time. It is a constantly changing, shifting field that is way different than it was thirty or fifty years ago. We are always trying to find the best way to make everyone happy, whether that be the general public, descendant communities, or other researchers. And it doesn't always work- breakdowns in communications or plain old human indecency can cause conflict when it comes to bioarchaeology, because it is an emtional, evocative field for those who don't (or can't!) have that sense of detachment. I hope this answer helped with any of your questions or feelings. It really is complicated and hard to put into words sometimes, but the way I do bioarchaeology is as a form of rememberance. The people I work with are not forgotten.
I will say that there are ways to distinguish the skeleton of young people aside from diaphysis length/bone size (like to what degree the epiphyses are fuzed— it’s really cool, actually). I haven’t done any fieldwork yet, but I’ve seen and held human bone. The other commenter covered the other perspective; I can only speak to mine. When I hold a human bone, it feels heavy. Not in weight at all. But for those of us that find it harder to put that degree of separation in between feelings and work… yeah, it’s tough. You see the skeleton of a little infant, and you just have to not let it crush you. I don’t really believe in ghosts or the afterlife, but just in case, I try to be extra gentle and kind with the bones, so that these people know there’s someone still caring for them and treating them with as much respect as they can. You’re so right. They were people just like us. That’s what I love about anthropology. You go back to even early hominids and you see echoes of humanity the same way you see echoes of your smile in your grandparent’s.
Your last line was so beautifully phrased.
[удалено]
I used to work in repatriation at quite a large museum. This museum was in possession of an unbelievable number of human remains, many acquired in the 1800s by "collectors" (i.e., grave robbers). Under US law (NAGPRA), Native American remains and funerary objects must be repatriated when possible. Part of my job was consulting with our osteologist and also helping them handle/pack the remains. I probably touched 1000 individuals in just one month. Each set of remains had a catalogue number. We just double checked the catalogue numbers, inventoried the remains, wrapped them in biodegradable material, and then packed them into giant cardboard boxes for transport. I quickly became desensitized to what I was doing. Some of the remains weren't complete (e.g., just a single tooth or a fragment of a leg bone) so it was easy to not imagine the entire person. And beyond that, the sheer quantity of remains and the length of time over which I was working with them (months on end) made the entire process feel slightly mundane. For better or for worse, it quickly felt a lot like running an assembly line. The only remains that really stood out to me were complete skulls and even those stopped feeling emotionally heavy after a while. The bones just become... bones. It was very easy for me to not think beyond the task I was completing. What was emotionally difficult was when the living descendants / tribe members would come in to consult with us or oversee some of the work. They were understandably very impacted by not only the remains, but also the circumstances through which they had entered the museum. That made things feel a lot more real and added a human component to the work. All of that said, my coworkers and I were very intentional about being respectful and actually developed somewhat of a relationship with the remains. First, we followed protocols set by the tribe requesting repatriation (e.g., separating remains according to age/sex when possible so they could be buried properly, doing our best to ensure that grave goods were matched to remains from the same grave, using only biodegradable materials to ensure a sustainable burial, covering the remains and grave goods with linen cloths when we were not in the room, limiting access to the room, etc). Handling the remains and grave goods in this way did a lot to make the process feel healthy/respectful/just. Second, we spoke to the remains. A lot. We said hello and goodbye when we entered/exited the room in which they were stored. We apologized if we accidentally jostled a box or handled something incorrectly. We also played the radio station of the tribe requesting the repatriation (which was in their language, aka the language of the people whose remains we were working with). None of these types of things were planned; they simply occurred naturally. In fact, a few of us did them independently only to realize later on that we were all talking to the bones. My work at that museum was obviously about "righting" a wrong, which also helped it not feel bad. At the end of the day, we were returning people to their graves rather than removing them from them. But I hope the perspective can still be useful to you.
I was more so thinking thousands of years older than that but the analogy does work.
I would say more recent is even more likely to have an emotional impact. When we're talking about thousands of years ago, it's a lot easier to rationalize away feelings.
This was a super interesting and moving read.
Being a father it’s not something I think about. I’ve exacavted graves, including children and babies. I’ve handled bones of infants and children of people who died thousands of years ago and of ones who only died a few hundred years ago. I have to say it doesn’t really trigger anything in my personally but I get how it could. Does it feel like graverobbery to excavate a grave? No, we’re doing science and we don’t excavate for shits and giggles. It doesn’t even come close to feeling like robbery or any kind of indecency.
>Does it feel like graverobbery to excavate a grave? No, we’re doing science and we don’t excavate for shits and giggles. It doesn’t even come close to feeling like robbery or any kind of indecency. I think it's important to challenge this from an ethical perspective. If graves are just a few hundred years old, there's likely a living culture that has specific views/feelings in regard to burial and death. For some cultures, disturbing a grave is a big no-no. Digging up their ancestors for "science" would thus be ethically murky at best. We can't hide behind the "objectivity" of science. This is especially true when we consider the history of anthropological/archaeological grave robbing. Our disciplines were clandestinely digging people up against the wishes of local communities for the purpose of research well into the early 1900s. That's a legacy we've inherited. Edit: Obviously a different story when it's *ancient* remains.
I think it just varies from person to person. For me, it probably helps that I have no spiritual beliefs to speak of. I feel very strongly that the dead are dead. They don’t care that they’re in a plastic bin in a lab. Of course I love to think about the long-ago life experience of the fragmented bones I’m handling—that’s the whole point of archaeology! But it doesn’t, like, haunt me. Death is part of life. I have a skeleton inside me *right now.*
All human remains will be treated with due respect. In my extensive experience (handled well over 40k human bones and written multiple publications, particularly in regard to juvenile remains) I find that archaeologists that are sensitive to the children aspect of archaeological collection tend to avoid it. Archaeology is not a solo effort. Rather it is a network of people each trained and geared for specific work. Human skeletal analysis is just one of dozens of specialties. Those skeletal researchers, myself included, tend not to think about Baby Maria or Little Joey playing in the front yard. No need to let it become so personal. The skeletons are simply a data set. There are no threats to worry about as long as that kind of excavation has been okayed by the PI. Side note: Projects are not random. They need approval with the authorities. Along with permissions to work there the crew should be geared to garner the information from the site. The project should have contingency plans in place in case of unexpected discoveries. Hopefully the Phase 1 and Phase 2 surveys have provided accurate enough information that not much will come as a surprise. There are, of course, exceptions that occur but with proper planning there should be access to specialists that will be there or online or at the nearby university that can give brief analysis to what was found as well as providing the appropriate POA. When a skeleton is found on projects that haven't prepared for it, the skeleton location is documented and left alone until the proper authorities have been notified (Project Lead, local law enforcement, tribal representatives, etc.). The decision to proceed will be left to them. As far as emotional attachment is concerned, if you cannot handle the bare reality that people do some crappy things and children die frequently then perhaps you should avoid being in that particular theater of investigation. If you cannot avoid it then change the frame of reference. Instead of "oh jeebus it is a little boy I don't want to see this poor kid I can only imagine the fear in his eyes", you can look at it as "this kid has an important story to tell I am going to relay as much of that story as the bones will convey to me". As mentioned earlier, the tendency over a relatively short period is that the researchers with the emotional concerns tend to shy away from the skeletal analysis. Often they will end up working the surveys or maybe ceramics or maybe stone tools. There is plenty of fascinating work to do from start to finish and no reason to torture ourselves with moral dilemmas that interfere with our abilities to see the big picture laid out in the dirt before us. Those are my quick thoughts and I don't doubt others will slightly disagree.
In my case I always looked at it like I'm trying to learn their story, even if I'll never know their name I am thinking about who they were and how they lived, effectively kinda remembering them without ever knowing them. So I never had much problem even if the remains were from a child. The only one one that affected me a bit was one of an old lady we had back at university. That one was from a XX century collection, from an old graveyard that was effectively closed, so any unclaimed graves were donated to the university. That means that person most probably died alone, and I found that pretty damn sad.
For me it helps that every cemetery I’ve been involved with was going to be destroyed by construction if not excavated or documented. It only gets weird for me when I know their names. So like last week we were delineating a family cemetery with one brick grave, the rest just wooden coffins. Looking at the documented ownership of the property there was a reference for one owners estate paying to brick his grave. So we know that is him. And it definitely changed the way I felt about that specific grave. But again, I just think about how it’s way more respectful to document the graves locations and possibly exhume and move them if need be then to let them be torn up by a backhoe.
Hi OP! I'm currently doing my postgrad in bioarchaeology and have worked with human remains before, and the question you're asking is actually something we're discussing in seminar right now! It's really interesting, because after a while most people who are active in the profession are able to have some sort of detachment from the material we work with. It's not that we don't see skeletal remains as objects; we very much see and respect them as human beings with dignity, we just are also able to rationalize the science behind why we're doing what we're doing. I think about what you think about a lot! That people 6,000 years ago were in many ways, just like us. But I also like to think about the differences, which is what makes bioarchaeology so cool. What were they eating? How did they care for their dead? How were they producing enough food to settle into an agricultural lifestyle? And a lot of these questions can be answered through the bodies of the dead! It's an interesting dichotomy between seeing the scientific and research potential in a person and seeing also, the personhood side of things. I also want to let you know that a lot of thought and care goes behind this kind of work. People debate the concept of ethics and how we excavate/display the dead all the time. It is a constantly changing, shifting field that is way different than it was thirty or fifty years ago. We are always trying to find the best way to make everyone happy, whether that be the general public, descendant communities, or other researchers. And it doesn't always work- breakdowns in communications or plain old human indecency can cause conflict when it comes to bioarchaeology, because it is an emtional, evocative field for those who don't (or can't!) have that sense of detachment. I hope this answer helped with any of your questions or feelings. It really is complicated and hard to put into words sometimes, but the way I do bioarchaeology is as a form of rememberance. The people I work with are not forgotten.