I would like to add my comments to this particular agrument and to the
orginal enquiry:  First the latter:  it seems that we are dealing with
what is "ideal" and what we can do with our budget and other
constraints.  These are valid aspects to that original enquiry that do
deserve attention, even if the end result is a low-tech solution.
 
On the former:  Too often the PC (Political Correct) claptrap emerges
like a pimple on the face of a self-conscious adolescent.  In many ways
the self-consciousness agruments are asking a why question to a statement
of validity.  That why question is not the statement of validity and is a
separate entity.
 
The actions of archaeologists are the same as any other thief BUT with
the patina of "scientific" as a justification.  The removal of ANY grave
goods or bodies is theft and desecration.  There is no moral
justification for that act.  Still be are able to use our best 20/20
hindsight to see the shame of what others have done, and yet we cannot
see what we do now or what we will do in the sacred name of science.
 
Science is a belief system with a particular world view (or explanation
of the comos).
 
The point here is not to confuse the ethnocultural preservation of that
with which we have been charged to care, but to look at how we can best
fulfill that responsibility.
 
On Mon, 22 Aug 1994, Linda Young wrote:
 
> Wendy Botting asks the really pertinent question in this debate:  Why
> aren't the remains of an ancient Egyptian treated in the same manner as the
> remains of a Native American by all professionals in our field?
>
> It seems to me we are looking at different historical/political relations
> with ancient Egyptians and with ancient Aboriginal people.  We have a
> methodology in Australian heritage management of assessing the significance
> of things or places as historic or social  (plus a few more criteria), and
> the difference is that 'social' significance applies to contemporary
> perception; 'historic' significance to perception in or of the past.  These
> categories define the difference between long-dead Egyptians and
> Aborigines.  The former are of historic interest or significance in our
> western culture (though it might just be different in Egypt - are they at
> all sensitive about mummies there?).  The latter are of significance right
> now, for political reasons of ethnic identity and legal recognition, to a
> certain community, viz their descendents.
>
> In short, the larger moral issue of how we treat the bodies of the dead, in
> whatever culture including our own, is essentially determined by the pulls
> and pushes of power, ie politics.
>
> Linda Young
> [log in to unmask]
>