h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The clue's in the question, folks, and it's been bugging me for years. At what point does graverobbing become archaeology? Is there a difference? Why does my local museum not display a 'typical' C19th corpse? Here's a couple of starters...

- it's archaeology once all the relatives are dead

- It's graverobbing if done for personal profit (but if the British Museum does it...)

Let's hear it, Researchers.

oops. Sorry about the nineteenth century 'link' thing. I have no idea what it does.

If you put an F or U or A or C in front of numbers h2 automatically links to that page even if such a page doesn't exist yet.

To your list I would add something about colonialism. One culture's archaeology is another's graverobbing.

Surely grave robbing is never archaeology.
The very nature of illegally taking away artefacts, or the body itself, usually for profit, spoiling the site without any proper investigation could never be considered archaeology.

Do you really mean, when is it OK to dig up a body to examine it & possibly put it on show as a historic display? There does seem to be a trend now that any bodies exhumed in an archaeological (or otherwise) dig are reburied elsewhere. Some forensic examination does seem reasonable, to establish date, cause of death, possible identity, in case relatives can be located. Otherwise I think only bodies of extreme interest such as mummies & peat bog bodies are retained for display.

Are there laws about it? People have to give permission these days for their own or a relative's body to be used for medical research/ public display.

I was thinking more historically. Many colonising cultures treated body remains of the cultures they were colonising as artifacts despite there still being living relatives. So what the collectors saw as science, the native peoples saw as grave robbing (which it was). Fortunately many countries now are returning remains to the people they belong to.

I know that in NZ now when Maori graves are discovered (often by mistake) that Maori are involved in what happens. I guess it depends on the laws of the country that the remains are found in.

Well, in Northern America they do have some problems with finding old corpses. If the Native Americans can show they have a link to that dead person, they can have the body reburied and off-limits to archeologists. Which means there are some interesting sites that might not get investigated.

Hope you don't mind me asking a question kinda linked to this, why is it that whenever they do an archaelogical dig these days in the UK and find a skelebob that they have to put a screen up round it? Like the forensics screens they have for murders and so forth? Is it just a preliminary exercise until they can be sure the remains are ancient rather than recent (and therefore subject to police inquiry) or is it some form of respect to the individuals remains?

I see your point. One only has to think of Egyptian tombs.

I haven't noticed screens appearing round skeletons in the programmes I watch. My guess is that it would be to help eliminate contamination.

But egyptian graves were already being robbed by people who would likely destroy what wasn't worth anything, and melt down the gold statues. The more "organised graverobbers" such as Carnavaron ensured that it was preserved.