Friday, June 06, 2008

New Facebook group

We're Pagans who love archaeology and believe that it has contributed hugely to our knowledge of our ancestors and the religions of the past.

Without archaeology, people would still think ancient peoples were fur-clad smelly cannibals and that ancient paganism involved practising human sacrifice.

In addition, we are opposed to the reburial of ancient human remains, and want them to be preserved so that the memory of the ancestors can be perpetuated and rescued from oblivion, and the remains can be studied scientifically for the benefit of everyone.

Of course we want human remains to be treated with respect, but respect does not automatically mean reburial. Respect should mean memory, which involves recovering the stories of past people.

We also believe that the excavation of Seahenge was a good thing, contributing hugely to our knowledge of Bronze Age religious practices.

Not on Facebook? Express your support in the comments, or join the Yahoo group.

Update: I have now created a blog, Pagans for Archaeology, to accompany the groups.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

If I were on Facebook I'd be tempted to join. But really you're not going to make any inroads into public consciousness if you're going to be sensible all the time. :)

Anastasia Kirov-Renshaw said...

No-one speaks of re-cremation of the ancient dead, do they? If that seems silly, what then of re-burial? If the one is a one-off rite of passage not sensibly to be repeated, so, surely, is the other. What is done, is done. We do not have the knowledge to re-conduct whatever rites were originally performed, and in some respects these might not even be legal these days (I am thinking of, for example, animal sacrifice at the inhumation site). What good is a substitute neo-pagan ceremony which may not reflect the beliefs of the deceased any more accurately than a Christian ceremony?

Papa Nick (who has reburied part of a Roman Carthaginian with Latin pagan and Catholic rites, but it was either that or landfill).