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Accepted Paper:

From respect to reburial: examining contemporary pagan interest in prehistoric human remains in Britain  
Robert Wallis (Richmond University) Jenny Blain

Paper short abstract:

Following the Avebury Reburial Consultation, we examine pagan and heritage discourses of the British prehistoric dead and competing worldviews from which emotive calls for the reburial of prehistoric pagan human remains, versus their retention for scientific study, are articulated.

Paper long abstract:

The Avebury Reburial Consultation has drawn attention to an issue recently emerging in Britain: along with growing public interest in British prehistory and archaeology has come an interest in 'ancestors' that goes far beyond curiosity or historic interest to spiritual engagement and ritual communication, notably among growing p/Pagan religious movements. Our Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights project, a collaboration between an archaeologist and an anthropologist, has examined pagan representations of pasts and engagements with ancestors. We here focus on approaches to the prehistoric dead and worldviews enabling communication from which calls or 'claims' for the reburial of prehistoric pagan human remains, versus their retention for scientific study, are articulated; frameworks for assessing and adjudicating such 'claims'; and implications for interest groups concerned.

We contrast the Avebury Reburial Consultation (closed February 2009) and the temporary redisplay of Lindow Man at the Manchester Museum (April 2008 - April 2009). In the former case, frameworks for assessing and adjudicating reburial 'claims' based on DCMS guidelines leave little scope for engaging seriously with the deeply-felt emotive responses to 'ancestors' felt by many pagans. In the latter, curators worked with interest groups, including local pagans, to display alongside scientific discourse the wide variety of emotions and interests in the bog body, and to accommodate private and community ritual actions. This paper, in examining issues with the DCMS framework, and expressions of kinship, knowledge and 'woundedness' expressed by pagans relating to the ancient dead, asks why there is such resistance to spiritual expressions of community with 'ancestors'.

Panel P13
Encounters with the past: the emotive materiality and affective presence of human remains
  Session 1