Sacred Bones

Higgins said:

The strict Wahhabis may have made an error in desecrating Sufi graves.

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Speaking of shamanism.

On the other hand, as an Archaeologist, I've looked over lots of
the bones of the sacred dead.
I suppose, as an Archaeologist, I thought I was not
desecrating anything, but rather reconstructing another's sacred world.

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Einstein's theory of relativity. And if you had been reconstructing the sacred world of Wahhabi?


AMC

The word Islam means 'submission', but in many of the Islamic struggles at the moment it seems to mean 'compulsion'.

As for exhuming people, it seems to come down to what you can get away with. Nobody really cares about graves other than the ones they remember. Urban gravesites with named bodies are sometimes moved and people don't complain too loudly. Ancient families buried together for millennia are exhumed, separated and studied -- and nobody speaks for them or holds sacred the sentiment that interred them together. On the other hand, tourist buses to Gallipoli roll over the scattered, shattered bones of nameless Turkish, British and Australian dead and people are appalled.

What's Right? What's Not-Right? I don't know. The logical part of my head thinks that all taboos are silly, and that bodies are just hydrocarbons that eventually become something else. The empathic part thinks that everyone needs a safe, respected place to house their suffering and grief, and that our recognition of suffering and grief in others should find its natural expression in our respect for their memorials and interments.

... on the surface, archaeology and desecration aren't entirely unrelated as you say, Higgins. Interesting and rather disturbing article.

Higgins said:

1) we the archaeologists do care about them

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While I think that many archaeologists do care about bodies as though they were members of a large, extended human family, I think it's also true that many don't -- or at least haven't. They care about the 'finds' the way an antiquarian cares about the possessions of the recently deceased.

2) in fact it is illegal for non-archaeologists to disturb "antiquities" in the USA (suggesting a minor religious role for archaeologists)

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Interesting thought. To the extent that human history embeds our myths and our myths are generally sacred, I suppose that archaeologists in particular and historians in general do function in a semi-religious role. But you can equally argue that good historians serve an anti-religious role, in that their job is to debunk the sacred when it's clearly counter-factual. And since archaeologists can hardly be considered 'owners' of either the history or its artifacts we have to ask who the real owners are and how they feel about learning that (say) hundreds great grant-aunt Nefertiti was not beautiful as family myths insist, but had a nose like an aardvark.

3) And archaeologists generally have gotten away with completely clearing out graves or "finds"...though in the USA various Indian tribes have claimed oversight over all pre-Columbian human remains...which can be a bit confusing.

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Whenever I read a post in this discussion my mind turns to the grave-robbing anatomists of the 17th-19th centuries. Nobody sings paeans to them, yet without them our medicine wouldn't exist. But how on earth did they pick their vocation? 'Let's see... I know I want to commit crimes, lurk in basements and work up to my armpits rotting flesh, but I'm also really keen on science... surely there has to be a career for me?'

This is my first post in a while (no internet right now) and I'm having a very hard time putting this into words, so bear with me (or skip the post ).

What al-Shabab did spurred enough violence that it ended up costing them...so yeah, they went too far, and I think that's pretty hard to argue on that level.

Personally, I place a lot of emphasis on intent. These bodies weren't carefully exhumed for study. They weren't being moved to a safer location. They were being intentionally desecrated. But were al-Shabab trying to help their fellow Islamists stay true to the faith (by removing the temptation of "idolatry"--and suddenly other instances, dealing with other religions, spring to mind), or were they trying to cause pain, disrespect, and anger?

I--and probably most of us here--think it wrong to try and force people to fit your own (or your own faction's) religious mold. We have a strong sense of freedom of religion, or at least "live and let live". But al-Shabab has a completely different paradigm. I have a hard time guessing what their true motives were. They may not have meant to cause tears, but rather greater and truer devotion. Moses and the golden calf spring to mind.

In the end, however, no matter what their intent, the end result is that they did cause pain, disrespect, anger, and ultimately violence. So again, they went too far. But there's a foggy area here, one I'm having a hard time pinning down...

To me, they went too far when they used desecration to try and forceably stop their fellow Islamists from going down a path they percieved as sinfull...but there's that issue of paradigm, and it's all mixed up with intent...

And on the larger question of Sacred Bones...

I don't care what happens to my body once I leave it. Burn it, throw it to the wind, feed it to the buzzards. I won't notice, much less care. But I do care about my children's feelings, and my husband's, and all those who love me. I don't want anything to happen to my body that's going to bring pain to those who still live. Anyone who would disturb a body with that intent is committing a great evil in my mind, and I can't think of anything to mitigate that.

Bones are sacred in so much as they mean something to the living.


Al-Shabab desecrated the sacred.


ETA: *sigh* on re-reading, that was even more rambling than I anticipated. Sorry, guys. And now I'm being told I have to go...hopefully I'll be fully on-line again in a month.

Very disturbing article, but also interesting in showing how extremists can go too far. Their acts of desecration may have tilted the balance of power in the region.

I've always been conflicted about the display of the dead. The bog people and mummies are intersting to look at and learn about, but someone cared for them and went through rituals to bury them (in most cases - some of the bog folk may have taken the wrong step and drowned) and I think that photos should be taken and reburials should occur. Ditto the hundreds of Indian skeletons held in storage at the Smithsoniam. Bodies in dusty bosex are not serving science at all.

The one thing I am certain about is that if I went over to Riverside cemetary and tried to dig up one of the older graves for the study of late 19th century funeral customs, I would be in big trouble with the law and public opinion.

Saint Fool said:

Very disturbing article, but also interesting in showing how extremists can go too far.

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Yes, they can. (Where are all the moderate extremists anyway?)

It's a little odd how we think about our dead. We abuse the bones of living people far worse sometimes. Hit a living bone with a stick and it'll break -- that's a punishment that's been used all over the world, and still is in some parts. We react with individual horror to that thought, but only react with collective horror when someone hits the bones of a dead person with a stick.

Apparently we still value dead folks' bones more than we value the bones of the living.