Posts tagged human remains
Mexico mass grave was 'ancient cemetery' in Chiapas
Anthropologists in Mexico say the remains of 167 bodies found in a cave in the southern state of Chiapas were part of an ancient burial ground.
The National Anthropology Institute said tests showed the remains dated back to the eighth century.
Scientists hope pottery found in the cave will help them determine the community those buried belonged to.
Lost in History: Remains of dark ages princess found in field in Cambridge
The remains of a mysterious Anglo-Saxon princess, who died thirteen and a half centuries ago, have been found in a field three miles south of Cambridge.
Aged just 16 when she died, and buried lying on a special high status funerary bed, she was laid to rest…
Archaeological News: Human remains uncovered at York Minster
Human remains believed to be more than 800 years old have been discovered at York Minster.
The body was found by archaeologists during routine work to build a new lift-shaft in the Minster’s Undercroft.
It is the first time for 40 years that archaeologists have been permitted to work at…
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September 11 victims' remains dumped in landfill
Remains of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks were dumped in a landfill, it has emerged.
Small traces of the bodies of people killed when The Pentagon was attacked and when a plane crash-landed in Pennsylvania were transported there after being incinerated, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The practice was disclosed by an inquiry ordered by Leon Panetta, theUS secretary of defence, into previous reports that the remains of US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were similarly dumped.
It “began shortly after September 11, 2001, when several portions of remains from the Pentagon attack and the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, crash site could not be tested or identified,” the report said.
The inquiry found that the remains were cremated before being “placed in sealed containers that were provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor” by staff at the mortuary at Dover Air Force base.
The contractor incinerated the contents, and Dover officials assumed “nothing remained”, the report said. However, a query by managers led to the discovery that “residual material” was being dumped.
What happens if you find human remains in your garden?
When a set of bones was discovered at a property in Dorset this month, experts confirmed they were “bones of antiquity”. But what happens when you find human remains in your back garden?
Imagine you have got the builders in and they are digging up your garden.
Then suddenly work stops, and the contractors tell you they have uncovered a set of bones.
This is what happened to a woman from Preston, near Weymouth, who was having an extension built.
The news would probably trigger a whirlwind of questions: Are the bones animal? Are they human? And if so - are they ancient or evidence of a recent murder?
Most pertinently, what happens next?
Some handy advice from the BBC - good to know! ;o)
This is insanely neat. I love the pleased expression at the end.
Skeleton stop motion video by museumoflondon on Flickr:
Laying out a skeleton in anatomical postion
Mummy Pictures: Secrets of Stunning 19th-Century Heads Revealed
A mounted human head strikes a brain-teasing pose—just one of eight forgotten but stunningly preserved 19th-century Italian mummies whose secrets of preservation have only recently been unraveled.
Working in the town of Salò, anatomist Giovan Battista Rini (1795-1856) “petrified” the…
The ‘Pompeii’ of the Western Front: Archaeologists find the bodies of 21 tragic World War One German soldiers in perfectly preserved trenches where they were buried alive by an Allied shell
The bodies of 21 German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed.
The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in.
Thirteen bodies were recovered from the underground shelter, but the remaining men had to be left under a mountain of mud as it was too dangerous to retrieve them.
Nearly a century later, French archaeologists stumbled upon the mass grave on the former Western Front in eastern France during excavation work for a road building project.
Many of the skeletal remains were found in the same positions the men had been in at the time of the collapse, prompting experts to liken the scene to Pompeii.
A number of the soldiers were discovered sitting upright on a bench, one was lying in his bed and another was in the foetal position having been thrown down a flight of stairs.
As well as the bodies, poignant personal effects such as boots, helmets, weapons, wine bottles, spectacles, wallets, pipes, cigarette cases and pocket books were also found.
Even the skeleton of a goat was found, assumed to be a source of fresh milk for the soldiers.
Archaeologists believe the items have been so well-preserved because hardly any air, water or lights had penetrated the trench.
Click through for the rest of the article.
In 1988, some 43,000 Native American skeletons were on display in 163 museums in the United States! Many Native Americans were upset by the fact that so many of their ancestors’ remains had been excavated. This brought about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, under which Native American graves on federal and tribal lands are protected. The act also better defines the ownership of remains that are unearthed and requires institutions to catalogue all human remains in their collections.
The Director of the Mutter Museum turns his attention to the Soap Lady for this week’s Mutter Minute video:
Every Monday The Director of the Mütter Museum takes a minute to showcase an item from our collection. This week Robert showcases the soap lady. Buried in the early 1800s and her skin in the ground had decayed and turned into a soap like substance.
Fun fact: The Soap Lady only cost $15 to procure! People, that’s a steal.
In case you’re new to the concept of adipocere—basically, that’s when dead people turn to soap—I’ve got more posts about it here.
France returns 20 Maori heads to New Zealand in hopes of properly respecting the dead
Preparing the biggest homecoming yet of its kind, authorities in New Zealand on Monday received 20 ancestral heads of Maori ethnic people once held in several French museums as a cultural curiosity.
Since 2003, the South Pacific country has embarked on an ambitious program of collecting back Maori heads and skeletal remains from museums around the world. Yet the program has run into significant obstacles.
France long resisted handing over such cultural artifacts, but a law passed in 2010 paved the way for the return of the Maori heads. They were obtained as long ago as the 19th century, and one as recently as 1999.
Some Maori heads, with intricate tattoos, were traditionally kept as trophies from tribal warfare. But once Westerners began offering prized goods in exchange for them, men were in danger of being killed simply for their tattoos, French museum officials have said.
The heads handed over to New Zealand were not available for public viewing on Monday. Over the years, French museums, private collectors and anthropological researchers have preserved and stored the heads.
The idea behind getting back the body parts was that they would be returned to their home tribes throughout New Zealand, where tribal elders could mourn them and, if they chose, give them proper burials.
“They are, after all, human remains, and in the Maori culture they should not be publicly displayed,” said Pou Temara, a university professor who chairs New Zealand’s repatriation advisory panel.
Bridget Gee, a New Zealand embassy spokeswoman, said the heads remanded on Monday have not been displayed in public for years.
Most of the remains aren’t readily identifiable, and only a small percentage have been returned to their home tribes — who are loath to accept any remains that aren’t their own. Heads and body parts from over 500 people now sit in storage at the national musuem, Te Papa, in Wellington.
The practice of preserving heads was begun by Maori as a way of remembering dead ancestors. In the decades after Europeans arrived, the heads became a curiosity and sought-after trade item, prompting Maori to ramp up their production levels.
French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand and New Zealand’s ambassador presided over a solemn ceremony at Quai Branly museum in Paris, where the heads were encased in a box — the largest single handover of Maori heads to be repatriated, New Zealand’s embassy said.
Researchers, tribes clash over Native bones
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — On a bluff overlooking a sweep of Southern California beach, scientists in 1976 unearthed what were among the oldest skeletal remains ever found in the Western Hemisphere.
Researchers would come to herald the bones — dating back nearly 10,000 years — as a potential treasure trove for understanding the earliest human history of the continental United States. But a local tribal group called the Kumeyaay Nation claimed that the bones, representing at least two people, were their ancestors and demanded them back several years ago.
For decades, fights like this over the provenance and treatment of human bones have played out across the nation. Yet new federal protections could mean that the vast majority of the remains of an estimated 160,000 Native Americans held by universities, museums and federal government agencies, including those sought by the Kumeyaay, may soon be transferred to tribes.
Exhumation
Accidentally reblogged this to my username.tumblr.com blog, where I never post anything. D’oy!
Let’s try this again.
The digging up of a buried body is called exhumation, and is considered sacrilege by most cultures that bury their dead. However, there is often a number of…
A great documentary from 2001—“Changing Tombs”—is available in four parts on YouTube.
It chronicles the work of the London Necropolis Company, who were hired to exhume the remains of about 1,500 dead folks from the graveyard and crypt of the 18th-century St. Luke’s Church in London, to make way for its refurbishment as a London Symphony Orchestra facility.
Highlights:
- Part One (above): Astonishingly well-preserved remains exhumed from the site, dating from the mid-19th century
- Part Two: An overview of the 19th-centurty “burial crisis” in the U.K. and some choice passages from George Alfred Walker’s Gatherings from Graveyards; and details about Necropolis job requirements, which include a smallpox inoculation (something the British public stopped receiving in the early 1970s)
- Part Three: A Necropolis employee explains how his work helped him lose his religion; the difficulty of getting Chinese food delivered to a cemetery; and a sweet-ass Volvo hearse
- Part Four: Conclusion of the project and reburial of all the St. Luke’s remains in their new home, a mass grave outside London
Hope you enjoy as much as I did!
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“Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.”— Benjamin Franklin (via tristyntothesea)
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