Interesting question I posed myself

Lesbelges

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery, but it is ok for some guy with a degree "Archeology" to dig up some ancient tomb and remove all contents from it (A la the pharaohs, ancient greeks and romans). And most notably of all, what some would believe was the tomb of Jesus. When the pharaohs are interred in such complex tombs with doors that lead to nowhere etc, it's pretty clear that they didn't want to be disturbed, yet archaeologists are allowed to go in and take them out and then put them on display in a Museum or if you weren't the top of the top as far as sarcophagus, you end up in the storage area of the Museum. If i understood the Jesus documentary right, even Jesus or maybe it was just his family spent quite some time on a shelf next to 100's of ossuaries.

I don't know, this seems wrong to me. Who knows, maybe in 10,000 years most 2,000 epoch graves will have disappeared and they will end up on mine and pull me out to see if they can learn anything about the period...I say leave me the hell down there, I've made friends with the worms, and I don't like the likes of you.

Collin

Lesbelges wrote:

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery,

There might be relatives still alive who do not appreciate your digging up their beloved father or grandfather, whereas pharaohs do not have relatives and have been dead for thousands of years.

mammasan

Lesbelges wrote:

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery, but it is ok for some guy with a degree "Archeology" to dig up some ancient tomb and remove all contents from it (A la the pharaohs, ancient greeks and romans). And most notably of all, what some would believe was the tomb of Jesus. When the pharaohs are interred in such complex tombs with doors that lead to nowhere etc, it's pretty clear that they didn't want to be disturbed, yet archaeologists are allowed to go in and take them out and then put them on display in a Museum or if you weren't the top of the top as far as sarcophagus, you end up in the storage area of the Museum. If i understood the Jesus documentary right, even Jesus or maybe it was just his family spent quite some time on a shelf next to 100's of ossuaries.

I don't know, this seems wrong to me. Who knows, maybe in 10,000 years most 2,000 epoch graves will have disappeared and they will end up on mine and pull me out to see if they can learn anything about the period...I say leave me the hell down there, I've made friends with the worms, and I don't like the likes of you.

Well for starters those tombs or graves that archeologists are unearthing have a historical significance. They also have to obtain permits from the local government to dig at these sites and provide reason for doing so. They just can't go digging around nilly-willy style. I'm sure if you had a legitimate reason for unearthing a grave you could obtain the permits as well.

Lesbelges

mammasan wrote:

Well for starters those tombs or graves that archeologists are unearthing have a historical significance. They also have to obtain permits from the local government to dig at these sites and provide reason for doing so. They just can't go digging around nilly-willy style. I'm sure if you had a legitimate reason for unearthing a grave you could obtain the permits as well.

Yeah of course I wasn't saying that archeologists don't have to go through procedures to unearth tombs. But I'm saying that even though for us it may seem like a legitimate reason, it does not necessarily make it right.

mammasan

Lesbelges wrote:

Yeah of course I wasn't saying that archeologists don't have to go through procedures to unearth tombs. But I'm saying that even though for us it may seem like a legitimate reason, it does not necessarily make it right.

I don't see anything wrong with it. I mean without digging up these graves and tombs we would probably have a very limited knowledge of the ancient world.

chadwick

i stand in the middle on this..
they are educated grave robbers, yes or no ?
do they steal artifacts they find? i say sure they do..
some may not at all.. integrity?
some might steal one item some might take home several..
black market trading is real in the artifact world..
when construction crews are building highways and they unearth indian
burial grounds, holy toledo its on..
every archeologist in the reigon is called in and heavy equipment shuts down..
i myself have a very old piece my dad found in a creek in sacramento as a kid..
its been looked at by several archiologists/museums..
its old as hell, prehistoric jewelry, shiny black colored..
but it wasnt grave robbing to find it either..
found by walking in a creek screwin around..
we have axe heads, arrow heads..
i have a blue glass bead on a leather cord necklace, the beads from the 12th century..

tybird

Collin wrote:

There might be relatives still alive who do not appreciate your digging up their beloved father or grandfather, whereas pharaohs do not have relatives and have been dead for thousands of years.

Some are even extinct societies/cultures....a lot of it comes down to the rules and the laws of the society currently governing a territory. Is it always morally right? No, probably not. Grave robbing and looting are a common thing especially if the relics of a deceased society carry some market value. There is always the potential to gain some knowledge that is for the greater good from studying ancient remains.

lucylespian

Lesbelges wrote:

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery, but it is ok for some guy with a degree "Archeology" to dig up some ancient tomb and remove all contents from it (A la the pharaohs, ancient greeks and romans). And most notably of all, what some would believe was the tomb of Jesus. When the pharaohs are interred in such complex tombs with doors that lead to nowhere etc, it's pretty clear that they didn't want to be disturbed, yet archaeologists are allowed to go in and take them out and then put them on display in a Museum or if you weren't the top of the top as far as sarcophagus, you end up in the storage area of the Museum. If i understood the Jesus documentary right, even Jesus or maybe it was just his family spent quite some time on a shelf next to 100's of ossuaries.

I don't know, this seems wrong to me. Who knows, maybe in 10,000 years most 2,000 epoch graves will have disappeared and they will end up on mine and pull me out to see if they can learn anything about the period...I say leave me the hell down there, I've made friends with the worms, and I don't like the likes of you.

Trouble wiht his kind of thinking is that you can apply it to nearly everything, and you wind up with a world where people are shit scared to get out of bed in case they upset someone or something.
We aren't far off this now. INdulging sensitivities just makes them worse.

somebodyelsessky2020

Wow i never knew it wasn't alright! I collect sculls so I always considered it like looking for sea shells on the sea shore...where am i gonna find sculls to add to my collection now

Rhinocerous Surprise

I always wondered what the appropriate amount of time was... You know - how long do we wait before a grave becomes "diggable" for historic purposes? But I'm sure there's an easy answer that I just haven't been bothered to think of yet...:p

tybird

Rhinocerous Surprise wrote:

I always wondered what the appropriate amount of time was... You know - how long do we wait before a grave becomes "diggable" for historic purposes? But I'm sure there's an easy answer that I just haven't been bothered to think of yet...:p

Probably around a 100 years is good enough, it seems.

Byrnzie

Collin wrote:

There might be relatives still alive who do not appreciate your digging up their beloved father or grandfather, whereas pharaohs do not have relatives and have been dead for thousands of years.

But what if they knew something we don't, and digging up their graves put's paid to their continued existence in the afterlife? These people lived with these ideas for approx 5000 years of longer. Our own way of thinking has only been predominant for about 200 years. Maybe they were right about the spirit world and our relationship to it, and we are in the wrong?

Collin

Byrnzie wrote:

But what if they knew something we don't, and digging up their graves put's paid to their continued existence in the afterlife? These people lived with these ideas for approx 5000 years of longer. Our own way of thinking has only been predominant for about 200 years. Maybe they were right about the spirit world and our relationship to it, and we are in the wrong?

I guess some archeologists are about to find out then.

Mookie Baylock

Lesbelges wrote:

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery, but it is ok for some guy with a degree "Archeology" to dig up some ancient tomb and remove all contents from it (A la the pharaohs, ancient greeks and romans). And most notably of all, what some would believe was the tomb of Jesus. When the pharaohs are interred in such complex tombs with doors that lead to nowhere etc, it's pretty clear that they didn't want to be disturbed, yet archaeologists are allowed to go in and take them out and then put them on display in a Museum or if you weren't the top of the top as far as sarcophagus, you end up in the storage area of the Museum. If i understood the Jesus documentary right, even Jesus or maybe it was just his family spent quite some time on a shelf next to 100's of ossuaries.

I don't know, this seems wrong to me. Who knows, maybe in 10,000 years most 2,000 epoch graves will have disappeared and they will end up on mine and pull me out to see if they can learn anything about the period...I say leave me the hell down there, I've made friends with the worms, and I don't like the likes of you.

Actually, most archaeologists don't excavate graves regularily. Speaking as an archaeologist, in most cases, when you hit a grave you gasp, because it generally means the excavation is over. The US has a law called NAGPRA (North AmericanGraves Protection and Repatriation ACt), and most civilized countries have some equivilant.

Only with very very special permission would you dig a grave, and in most cases it is because the site is endangered and is being relocated.

Most museums are currently undergoing repatriation programs to return skeletal remains and grave goods to their descendants to make up for the overzealous archaeologists of the past who excavated without consideration for cultural sensitivities.

know1

Lesbelges wrote:

Why is it not ok for me to go and dig up some random grave in the local cemetery, but it is ok for some guy with a degree "Archeology" to dig up some ancient tomb and remove all contents from it (A la the pharaohs, ancient greeks and romans). And most notably of all, what some would believe was the tomb of Jesus. When the pharaohs are interred in such complex tombs with doors that lead to nowhere etc, it's pretty clear that they didn't want to be disturbed, yet archaeologists are allowed to go in and take them out and then put them on display in a Museum or if you weren't the top of the top as far as sarcophagus, you end up in the storage area of the Museum. If i understood the Jesus documentary right, even Jesus or maybe it was just his family spent quite some time on a shelf next to 100's of ossuaries.

I don't know, this seems wrong to me. Who knows, maybe in 10,000 years most 2,000 epoch graves will have disappeared and they will end up on mine and pull me out to see if they can learn anything about the period...I say leave me the hell down there, I've made friends with the worms, and I don't like the likes of you.

I've wondered the same thing for years.

JonnyPistachio

I liken it to the fact that Weird Al Yankovic covers/goof on someones song. I think it's an honor.

If someone wanted to dig me up one day, i'd feel honored too. I'll probably be sealed up in a shitty box forever though.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Good question.

I looked at a bit of archaeology during my first degree, when studying Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and I think Schliemann's legacy as a looter and grave-robber still tarnishes popular perception of archaeology, regardless of how drastically the discipline has since evolved and incorporated geology, physics, art history and other academic fields of serious research.

I still ask: why did Heinrich Schliemann excavate Hissarlik, the first time around in 1871-2, with such reckless enthusiasm? The answer could well be that he hoped Priam's gold would be somewhere in the centre of that mound, which explains his crude driving of a north-south trench right through it.

He was a bit more subtle in his "archaeological" method, by the time he went to dig up Mycaenae, but without a doubt, whether or not he was hoping he'd find the tomb of Agamemnon and thus prove the historicity of Homer's Iliad to some degree (he didn't, the graves were much older than the projected Trojan war, if it ever happened), he found a lot of plunder. (You can see most of it now, in Athens.)

While in Hissarlik, he helped himself to a lot of found gold, and got his wife Sophie to pose in it for a photograph. The Turkish authorities were pissed off. That gold was missing for years, and if my memory serves me it only turned up in Russia a few years ago.

One also has to question whether he dug up the shaft graves in Mycaenae for the sake of "proving" the Trojan war, or whether he was hoping for personal gain. He was a complex character, for sure.

I think Schliemann has, outside of the academic community of course, forever tainted the reputation of archaeology - especially in the view of the Turkish authorities, if not the Greek.


But if anyone wants to see a beautiful archaeological project, check out Project Troia, Manfred Korfmann's legacy:

http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia/eng/index.html

justam

On the other hand, all the people buried ARE dead and regardless of how they might have felt about it when they were alive, they are now material for the living to recycle.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think every other living creature gets recycled once it dies, why not humans with stuff buried with them?

FinsburyParkCarrots

justam wrote:

On the other hand, all the people buried ARE dead and regardless of how they might have felt about it when they were alive, they are now material for the living to recycle.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think every other living creature gets recycled once it dies, why not humans with stuff buried with them?

Hamlet: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
Horatio: 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
Hamlet: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

justam

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Hamlet: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
Horatio: 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
Hamlet: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

hehehe