Editorial.

Editorial. Who do skeletons belong to? Are they scientific data or culturalheirlooms? A consultation paper due early in 2004 will give the BritishGovernment's take on this delicate matter of the archaeologicaltreatment of human remains (www.culture.gov.uk/global/publications/).There is to be a three month consultancy period--rather a tightturn-round for a quarterly journal, but it is hoped that readers willwant to express their views on this issue in the Debate Section and weintend to publish selected comments as we receive them on our letterspage (http://antiquity.ac.uk/Letters/letters.html). A Working Group onHuman Remains was set up in May 2001 under the Chairmanship of NormanPalmer, a specialist in art law at University College London “UCL” redirects here. For other uses, see UCL (disambiguation).University College London, commonly known as UCL, is the oldest multi-faculty constituent college of the University of London, one of the two original founding colleges, and the first British . Its 12members reported to minister Estelle Morris in November 2003,recommending that museums in England Museums in England is a link page for any museum in England by ceremonial county. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is the national development agency for museums in England, and is a sponsored body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. should adopt a liberal approach torequests for repatriation RepatriationThe process of converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country.Notes:If you are American, converting British Pounds back to U.S. dollars is an example of repatriation. and that DCMS (Digital Content Management System) See DAMS. (the ministry) should set up aHuman Remains Advisory Panel. The working group identified 132 museumsin England holding the human remains of 61 000 individuals. They hadreceived in recent years 33 requests for the return of human remains,including 11 from Tasmanian aboriginals, 10 from New Zealand Maoris, sixfrom Australian aboriginals and five from American communities (ArtNewspaper Dec 2003: 13). The report recommends that museums should notretain remains without the consent of close relatives of the deceased orfrom those "within a deceased person's own religion or culturewith a status comparable to that of close family". In an eight-pagestatement of dissent, the Director of the Natural History Museum SirNeil Chalmers voiced fears that advice would soon become obligation: therecommendations did not provide a proper balance between the publicbenefits deriving from medical, scientific and other research on the onehand and the wishes of the claimant community on the other. If themeasures were implemented Sir Neil feared that it would bring allresearch on human remains to a halt and would result in their mandatoryreturn to those communities. The British initiative follows (after the usual ten year interval)American practice as incorporated in the legislation of 1990, the NativeAmerican Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is a United States federal law passed in 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding[1] to return Native American cultural items to their respective peoples. (NAGPRA NAGPRA Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 ) whichrecognised the right of descendent communities to reclaim and dispose ofhuman remains in their ancestral territories. When human remains areencountered, the field archaeologist makes contact with the NativeAmerican authority to negotiate access and a period of study. Where theidentity of the descendent community is uncertain, the assemblage isofficially "declared" and time is allowed for it to beclaimed. Bones may usually be studied with permission and then arereturned ("repatriated") for reburial Noun 1. reburial - the act of burying againreburyingburying, burial - concealing something under the ground . Examples ofdeclarations and invitations to claimants can be found onwww.cast.uark.edu/products/NAGPRA The idea of a "descendant community" (as opposed to a"claimant community") makes little sense archaeologically,since it assumes that some people move about and others don't. Inpractice, the manner in which Scotland (for example) was settled,initially and later, by people from across every sea, is the very thingwe want to know, and archaeologists will go on wanting to know it,whatever political aurora temporarily dazzles the skyline. As the pagesof Antiquity are showing, the tools of the inquiry are nearly ready tostart work. In this edition we present state-of-the-art assessments ofthe use of stable isotopes for tracking changes of diet (carbon andnitrogen) and the movement of people (oxygen and strontium strontium(strŏn`shēəm)[from Strontian, a Scottish town], a metallic chemical element; symbol Sr; at. no. 38; at. wt. 87.62; m.p. 769°C;; b.p. 1,384°C;; sp. gr. 2.6 at 20°C;; valence +2. ) in NorthernEurope (see Milner et al., Liden et al., Hedges and Budd et al.). Theimplications of this technique for mapping the human experience areimmense--and it needs bones. Are we to repatriate repatriateTo bring home assets that are currently held in a foreign country. Domestic corporations are frequently taxed on the profits that they repatriate, a factor inducing the firms to leave overseas the profits earned there. the massivecollections of northern hemisphere burials in case we don't likethe answer? Er no,--because repatriating bones from Scotland to Ireland,Norway or Italy assumes you already know where they came from--and thatis begging the question. Hedley Swain is right to say (Public Archaeology 2.2 (2002):95-100) that what gives offence is determined by context, not by anyabsolute ethos. Personal anxiety about the excavation and exhibition ofbones in Scotland may be just as heartfelt and understandable as inAmerica or Tasmania; but it isn't so much (yet), for example, inEngland. Swains 1999 exhibition London Bodies registered the highestdaily visitor rate of any temporary exhibition at the Museum of London The Museum of London documents the history of London from the Palaeolithic to the present day. The museum is located in a 1970s building close to the Barbican Centre, approximately 10 minutes' walk north of St Paul's Cathedral and admission is free. since 1992. Of 162 comments received from the public, only one visitorwas unhappy about the ethics of displaying human remains, as comparedwith 17 who thought the captions and displays were too high, one who washoping the exhibition would be more shocking and one who wanted to seemore skeletons. So the location of an archaeological inquiry and theopinion of the people who live there are obviously key factors in aproject's design. Repatriation does not mean no research. The way forward is perhapsto recognize that the application of science requires not onlysensitivity towards the subject but the need to explain the objectiveand ensure that stake-holders have an unqualified opportunity toparticipate. In the famous case of 290 Broadway (Manhattan), inspiringlyfronted by 1993 editions of the Village Voice ("Black Bones, WhiteScience"), excavation at the African American burial ground wasbrought to a halt through the intervention of the Harlem Community, theNew York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. mayor, Congress and ultimately George Bush senior and thesite turned into a heritage destination. Why was this? On the face of itbecause African-American New Yorkers were not consulted and feltoffended; but, as stated by Mayor Dinkins and others, it was alsobecause of archaeological failings: the lack of a publically accessibleevaluation, research design and management plan. These are all aspectsof the same thing. We cannot disguise that some communities haveobjected to the study of human remains because the living (and byextension the dead) were not being treated with sufficient respect andsensitivity; but for any archaeological project, the proper respect dueto everybody (the scientific community included) requires the priorpublication, in advance, of a project design which takes account of thecurrent, as well as the ancient, context of the material deservingstudy. Solving that problem solves the other one. The so-called sky-disk (himmelsscheibe) of Nebra is one of the mostremarkable objects to have come to public notice in recent years, and wehope to feature a full description shortly by the team who are studyingit, led by Professor Ernst Pernicka of the Institute of Archaeometry atFreiberg and Dr Harald Meller of the State Museum for Prehistory atHalle. The slightly convex disc which measures about 30cm in diameterand weighs about 2kg carries gold foil patches which resemble the sun,moon and stars. It was part of a group of looted artefacts discovered inSachsen-Anhalt either near Nebra or near Sangerhausen (30km apart) inthe late 1990s and recovered by means of a police sting-operation inSwitzerland. The group includes two swords with gold foil ornaments, twoaxes, a "chisel" and fragments of arm spirals, all dated toabout 1600 BC. The pattern on the disk has been seen as a representationof the heavenly firmament with the seven stars being the Pleiades. Thethree curved strips (one is missing) are said to represent two horizonsand the ship which carries the sun. First acquaintance with the Nebrasky-disc is sensational--but disconcerting dis��con��cert?tr.v. dis��con��cert��ed, dis��con��cert��ing, dis��con��certs1. To upset the self-possession of; ruffle. See Synonyms at embarrass.2. : it seems to be winking. Our correspondent Andrew Sherratt observes: Since the 'Year ofthe Bronze Age' in 1994 there has been quite a rash of notablefinds from Germany, the most spectacular of which have not been made byarchaeologists. One is an Late Bronze Age conical gold hat (like thefamous example from Schifferstadt) bought from an unknown owner by theBerlin Museum for Pre- and Proto-history, through a firm ofintermediaries in Lichtenstein, whose decoration--like that of the Nebradisc--has been interpreted as having astronomical/calendricalsignificance. Another is the group of amber beads from Bernstorf inBavaria, with curious "Minoan" incisions, found by a group ofamateur archaeologists on a hillfort which would be of the same age asthe Nebra daggers, and also yielded gold diadems and pins. And now theNebra (or Sangershausen) finds themselves. The team investigating the*Himmelsscheibe* are working extra hard to demonstrate the integrity oftheir find, compromised (like the hat) by its chequered history and in acontext where such objects now command huge prices from collectors andmuseums. Appropriately enough, 2003 was the year when the term"bling bling" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary(OED) great multi-volume historical dictionary of English. [Br. Hist.: Caught in the Web of Words]See : Lexicography ..." Readers will find more at www.archlsa.de/sterne andwww.angelfire.com/me/ik/sangerhausenGB Our correspondent Peter Mitchell reports that the SudaneseGovernment has decided to proceed with the construction of a dam, theeffect of which will be to flood the Nile Valley between the FourthCataract and Abu Hamed, a distance of 170 km. Preliminary surveysalready conducted by Sudanese and international teams indicate thatthousands of archaeological sites ranging in date from the MiddlePalaeolithic to the early Islamic period will be destroyed by the floodwaters. Others are threatened by the establishment of new settlementsfor displaced communities or the construction of engineering works andpower lines. Sudan's authorities have already launched an appealfor international assistance to investigate and document thislittle-researched area of their country in advance of its loss toarchaeology on the completion of the dam in 2007. The British Museum isplaying an active role, holding an international colloquium col��lo��qui��um?n. pl. col��lo��qui��ums or col��lo��qui��a1. An informal meeting for the exchange of views.2. An academic seminar on a broad field of study, usually led by a different lecturer at each meeting. in May 2003and an exhibition on the archaeology of Sudan and Nubia in September2003. Further information can be obtained from Dr Salah el-Din MohammedAhmed of Sudan's National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums,Khartoum and from Dr Derek Welsby, President of the Society for NubianStudies (SARS@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk). The European Latsis Prize is awarded annually to the individual orgroup who has made the greatest contribution to a particular field ofEuropean research. In 2003 the field was archaeology and the prize (65000 [euro]) was awarded to Colin Renfrew at the Hilton Hotel, Strasbourgon 27 November last. Lord Renfrew commented that "it is wonderfulthat the European Science Foundation has this year ... chosen torecognise the growing significance of the discipline ofarchaeology" and expressed himself deeply honoured to represent it.We in Britain are all gratified grat��i��fy?tr.v. grat��i��fied, grat��i��fy��ing, grat��i��fies1. To please or satisfy: His achievement gratified his father.See Synonyms at please.2. to see archaeology distinguished amongthe ESF's pallette of useful sciences, and delighted to have ourstar archaeological thinker spot-lit in a pan-European competition.Colin Renfrew's special achievements were cited by the panel as therevelation of early exchange systems, indicated for example by themapping of the chemical signatures of obsidian, his second'radiocarbon revolution' (it's calibration bydendrochronology dendrochronology:see dating. dendrochronologyMethod of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree rings. Because the width of annular rings varies with climatic conditions, laboratory analysis of timber core samples allows scientists to ), the idea of separate (non-diffusionary) origins formegalithic meg��a��lith?n.A very large stone used in various prehistoric architectures or monumental styles, notably in western Europe during the second millennium b.c. monuments and copper working, his model for the Indo-Europeanlanguage as a travelling companion of farming and the development ofmethodologies for cognitive interpretation--determining how ancientpeople thought. As well as being brilliant, this work offers a theme forpost-war Europe: humane, liberating, favouring the achievements of thesmaller communities and the individual mind. Colin Renfrew retires fromthe Department of Archaeology in Cambridge this year, and we wish him ahappy and productive third age. As father of TAG (TheoreticalArchaeology Group) and the only professional archaeologist in the housesof parliament Houses of Parliament:see Westminster Palace. , we shall long continue to rely on his wisdom. Colin Renfrew's successor in the Disney chair at Cambridge isto be Graeme Barker, currently Head of Archaeology at Leicester, anastute academic leader who has launched research projects in threecontinents (Italy, Jordan, Brunei). We wish him all the best for afruitful reign--humane, liberating and favouring the individual mind. Martin Carver York, 1 March 2004