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ETHICS: Display & Treatment of Ancient Human Remains pp.236-245…
ETHICS: Display & Treatment of Ancient Human Remains
pp.236-245 Bradley
Past treatment of human remains
People's skeletons were destroyed in the search to find more important discoveries
Author of 'last days of Pompeii' kept a skull from the site on his desk
Some painters of the site had purposefully positioned skeletal remains in a specific way to be more dramatic
Skeletons were piled in bath houses without any care for the documentation of them
Present treatments of human remains
Archaeologists now are painstakingly uncovering and CT scanning the plaster casts
Teams dedicated to restoration of human remains
Insensitivity and neglect of early excavators
only recently that ethics and archeology have collieded
pressure from various groups - reevaluation of the treatment of human remains
archeologists are products of their time and changing values mean that every generation of archeologists inevitably regards its predecessors as crude and insensitive
early days = little regard for human remains
at Pompeii, skeletal remains were often destroyed in the rush to find precious finds, other taken as souvenirs
museum collections of human remains were for long periods left in dark dusty basements wrapped in newspaper
Appropriate storage procedures
in some museums, storage for human remains has been substandard
Storage should conform to conservation practices which protect remains agaisnt physical deterioration: wrapped in acid0free paper, placed in protective containers with envrionemtnal control, as well as being guarded against theft or malicious use
essential so that future scientists can check present interpretations, inaccuracies and bias when new techniques become available
display of human remains has always been controversial
Science against cultural sensitivity
"Human skeletons are indispensable for archaeological discoveries" - R Ford in
'Ethics and Archaeology'
Skeletons have a great value for the future
Many skeletons have been repatriated back to Pompeii and Herculaneum