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Calls for remains to be returned to Stonehenge (From Salisbury Journal)
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Calls for remains to be returned to Stonehenge
4:06pm Thursday 6th August 2009
A DRUID protester is calling for remains taken from the Stonehenge World Heritage site to be returned - and has collected thousands of signatures on a petition backing his call.
King Arthur Pendragon says to take the ancient remains permanently away from, what was intended to be, their final resting place would be undignified and should not be allowed.
He said: “There is no dignity left if they can just take them away and not care they were living, talking human beings at one stage.
“You wouldn’t dig up your grandmother, so what’s the difference?”
The remains were removed from the site last year for tests to be carried out as part of The Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.
The project, supported by National Geographic under the leadership of Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, led to new insights into the possible uses of the site.
Radiocarbon dating of human cremation burials at the ancient monument suggested it was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000BC until well after the large stones went up around 2500BC.
Many archaeologists previously believed people had been buried at Stonehenge only between 2700 and 2600BC, before the large Sarsen stones were raised and the new dates provide strong clues about the original purpose of the monument.
But the Druids say they will not rest until the remains have been once again laid to rest. A spokesman for English Heritage, which manages the site, said permission to excavate is only granted when the applicant can show the benefits in the increased knowledge are likely to outweigh the damage done by the work and that excavation of human remains is regulated under the Burial Act.
The spokesman said: “Scheduled monument consent was duly granted early in 2008, with appropriate conditions to safeguard the site and ensure what was found was appropriately studied,published and deposited in a museum.
“Human burials and human remains are an important part of the record of our shared past. English Heritage believes they should always be treated with respect, and that decisions about excavation, study, display and reburial should be based on the balance of benefit and harm, giving due weight to the views and interests of all those involved.”
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Your Say YourSalisbury
TheJanetAnalogy, Salisbury says...
2:13pm Wed 12 Aug 09
King Arthur Pendragon
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senua, says...
8:04pm Sat 8 Aug 09
Burial customs of the past are completely different from those of today. Besides what about those churches in the medieval period that were quite happy to display relics of saints.
Arthur Pendragon and his followers seem to think they are more important than the rest of us. Who ever was buried at Stonehenge might have been my ancestor too and the ancestor of the archaeologists who are studying them. In fact a good proportion of us in Britain are probably related to those buried in Stonehenge. Why should this druid group demand more rights than the rest of us.
Maybe it has nothing to do with honoring the ancestors. Perhaps these druid groups are afraid that their alternative history that they have woven around Stonehenge is crumbling away the more that archaeologists find out about the past. Maybe this is the reason they don't want digs at Stonehenge and other prehistoric monuments, and don't want the ancient ancestors to be studied,because the more information we get the more there made up history is destroyed.