It's not all rubbish!

Archaeology is largely concerned with digging in the ground to discover the remains of ancient people and societies. Generally speaking, it is their rubbish which we find - the results of rubbish disposal of one sort or another across the last ten millennia. Sometimes we come across things that were accidentally lost - coins, beautiful jewellery, or fine weapons. Sometimes the things we find were purposely buried - valuables maybe, hidden during a dangerous time and never recovered. However the most common things that were purposely buried were bodies - thousands of them in graves and cemeteries now long lost and forgotten. The discovery and excavation of human skeletons is one of the most gruesome and fascinating aspects of archaeological work and is always sure to raise public interest.

There are, of course, a great many regulations concerning human remains. Many of the laws date from the last century and were made to try and prevent the theft of bodies for medical uses. In law no-one can own a dead body, therefore, it cannot be stolen. However it is a common law offence to dig up a body without the proper authority. Most of the regulations are contained within the Burial Act of 1857, and it is this Act which still controls how we must deal with human remains.

Sometimes archaeologists know that they are going to encounter graves and skeletons, so they can write off for all the necessary permissions and licences in advance. More often, we come upon unexpected burials, in which case the work has to stop while we apply for a licence to remove the bones. This licence, which is known as a Home Office licence, gives the conditions for removing studying, storing and ultimately re-burying the bones.

Quite often it is builders, road menders or pipe layers who happen across human bones in their trenches. When ever human remains are encountered the finder has a duty to leave the bones as found and to report the discovery to the local coroner. The coroner must decide whether the remains are 'ancient' or whether they represent a recent burial. If the bones are over a hundred years old then it is not a police matter, but an archaeological one. However, if they are thought to be less than a hundred years old, the police will treat the matter as a suspicious death and will probably begin an enquiry.

For the archaeologists, the first task is to very carefully clean the bones in situ taking great care to watch for small items of jewellery or personal belongings which may be associated with the bones. Non-christian societies usually filled a grave with all sorts of gifts and objects for the departed person to carry on the journey to wherever. Sometimes, especially in the grave of an important person, these can be valuable and beautiful objects. More often they are purely practical - some tools, clothes or food. I can remember a Roman grave at Sleaford which merely had a plate of chicken and a cup for a drink. The majority of burials we deal with are Christian (almost always buried with their heads to the east) and sadly, they take little with them to their graves, and thus leave little for the archaeologists to record.

When everything has been carefully cleaned, the skeleton and any associated grave goods are drawn and photographed and the remains are bagged and boxed, ready for specialist study.

The people who study ancient human bones are called palaeopathologists. We use the ones at Bradford University, so all our boxes of skeletons go off to them. They can tell us such things as the sex and size of the person, their age at death, any physical deformities and, sometimes, they can tell us about the diseases the person suffered from or perhaps even died from. Problems such as arthritis and gout are commonly found, along with more serious diseases such as tuberculosis or leprosy. All of these leave their tell-tale signs on the bones. Some of the skeletons have met violent deaths and I have seen skulls with great sword cuts in them and ribs or backbones with arrowheads sticking into them. These are rare, however, and it is mostly disease that is evidenced in the bones.

When all the analysis is over, the archaeologist has a responsibility to re-bury the remains in a proper way. We would usually employ the services of a friendly vicar for burials we believe to be Christian, although clearly it is sometimes impossible to tell the beliefs involved. We have, on occasion, replaced prehistoric burials close to the places where they were originally found, although this might mean leaving them next to a busy new road or by-pass.

Over the years we have found out a great deal about past societies from the study of bones. We now know, for instance, that Roman and medieval people were only slightly shorter, on average, than we are, and any thoughts we might have of four foot high citizens are entirely false. We also know that the average age at death was around 40 until we reach the 20th century. A sobering thought.

Quite where the three score and ten of the Bible comes from, is hard to tell!

Dave Start
Director, Heritage Lincolnshire