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The Curious Case of the Ryedale Hoard & Tik Tok Shopping for Bones!? - WB 22nd Oct 2021
83 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/archaeosoup
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0:00 Introduction
1:33 The Ryedale Hoard
18:05 Selling Human Remains?
20:11 Stephanie Black Interview
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Link of the Week:
Black History Month:
www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk
***
Links:
Rare Roman Bronzes acquired by the Yorkshire Museum:
Ryedale Ritual Bronzes: Roman artefacts sell for £185,000:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-57069434
Yorkshire Museum Buys Ryedale Roman Bronzes from London dealer with help from wealthy donor:
Hanson’s Listing: Ryedale Ritual Bronzes:
https://hansonslive.hansonsauctioneers.co.uk/m/lot-details/index/catalog/153/lot/70029
New York dealer arrested for selling ‘cookie cutter’ manufactured good as authentic antiquities:
Owners urged to claim back heritage centre items:
https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/owners-urged-to-claim-back-heritage-centre-items/
Tik Tok User sells human bones, ignites ethical debate online:
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/tiktok-user-sells-human-bones-ignites-ethical-debate/story
TikToker selling human bones — including fetus skulls — spark ethics debate:
Selling dead bodies and mortuary artefacts in the UK today: Welbeck Hill:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Archaeosoup Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
Humorous Banter on Geography
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to Watching Brief for the week of the 18th of October 2021. I am joined as ever by my London-based co-host, Mr Andy Brockman. Good afternoon, Andy. Good afternoon. Mark, I'm pleased to see that people in the provinces are paying due deference to the capital city.
00:01:01
Speaker
It's a statement of fact, man. You just did London. But if you want, I will doff my cap as a poor provincial so-and-so to you down there in the royal city. Look, I'll accept that gesture with gratitude and point to the fact that you can always have your allegiance written to the Prince Bishop in Durham. And also, in fact, we're going to level you all up anyway. So we're all going to be the same in the end. What the heck?
00:01:31
Speaker
I'll believe that when I see it. I'll believe that when I see it, when Prime Minister Johnson gets around to it. You might say less, I couldn't possibly comment. Anyway, regardless of our geographical location, of our social economic position, or indeed of our cynicism,
Defining 'Treasure' Legally and Culturally
00:01:50
Speaker
our watching brief continues and that takes the form as ever of a discussion about the archaeological news of the week and the invitation for you guys to join the conversation in the comments below and this week we have a fairly rich scene of of an idea and this idea is something that I sort of titled broadly speaking the notes for this week's agenda uh treasure versus treasured uh that is to say
00:02:17
Speaker
The difference between the technical definition of treasure, i.e. metallic items with gold and silver content that the coroner deems to be treasure, versus things which have cultural significance and that everyone else in fact can see is more or less in the same category as treasure, but is treated differently because of a technicality actually.
00:02:44
Speaker
in terms of what it's made from. This line of thinking has led us down the route of thinking about the relationship between museums, the public purse in terms of purchasing power, and the origin of so many artefacts that find their way into essentially a
00:03:04
Speaker
a broader market of artificial heritage that doesn't always begin with metal detecting and the second half of this week's show is definitely a case study in something which is not from that sort of origin.
Roman Bronzes and Cultural Heritage
00:03:19
Speaker
But in this instance, it did start out in a field and was discovered by two metal detectorists
00:03:24
Speaker
And it all really kicks off with the Yorkshire Museum's trust to press release, the announcement that rare Roman bronzes have been acquired by the Yorkshire Museum. This was dated the 13th of October and they got to say that 1,800-year-old hoard, including a bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, has been secured thanks to the generous support
00:03:49
Speaker
of various donors, including Richard Bellason, other individual donors, the Art Fund and David Aron, ALTD, a London-based antiques trader. I mean, what's wrong with this, actually, Andy? I mean, why are we commenting on this? This is a museum that's bought something for the public to be able to view seemingly in perpetuity from now on.
00:04:17
Speaker
And that's to be welcomed, and it is all perfectly legal. I think it raises some interesting questions. A bit of background for our viewer. In May of 2020, two metal detectorists, James Spark and Mark Biblick, were metal detecting in a field near Amperforth, people might remember, Amperforth Abbey is a very famous monastery in rural Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, in an area called Ryder.
00:04:47
Speaker
And they found a horde of large Roman bronze objects in particular. There's a horseman, there's the head and front legs of a leaping horse.
00:05:03
Speaker
There is a bust, which tends to be identified by a number of experts as of being the emperor of Microsoft really is. It certainly appears to be a second century Antonine period head. It's bearded. He's got curly hair.
00:05:20
Speaker
he's not carrying a copy of the meditations because he hasn't got any hands because it's a bust, but it looks like the head of an emperor of that period. To be fair though, he does look like a promontory against which the ways of the world might crash, to quote meditations there. He is unmoved by the world. But something else that would help assess whether the world was being moved or not is the rather incongruous object that completes the horde, which is a plumb
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and a plumb bob for folks at home, in case you don't know, it's just a weight. Often it's a weight that's shaped to have a point at the bottom for indication purposes. You hang it from a string and it gives you a true, due to gravity, a true line in terms of straight down. You can use it for masonry, sculpture.
00:06:10
Speaker
And in fact it was an integral part of a Roman engineering, measuring instrument called a gromer.
Market Influence on Cultural Value
00:06:15
Speaker
Yes. Which used plumbobs to create right angles and set off straight lines, settle straight lines on building sites and so on. So it's something that was integral to Roman civilization, if you like, Roman architecture, Roman building.
00:06:32
Speaker
The objects were found and my understanding from talking to people who are familiar with the process is that there were initial negotiations between the Finders and the Landowner and the York Museum's Trust to take on the objects because they were very rapidly seen as being of national importance and obviously very great importance to the cultural history of Roman Yorkshire.
00:06:58
Speaker
And they were able to have those kind of negotiations because being a base metal, uh, copper alloy bronze, um, they don't come under the purview of the treasure act 1996. So it wasn't compulsory for the finders to report them to the coroner and for there to be an investigator reprocess and an inquest to assess value and, and assign, uh, uh, assign them to, uh, to be kept by the public, which is the case with treasure objects, which contain gold or silver.
00:07:28
Speaker
So was initial conversation begun there with the museum regardless? That is my understanding. Now again this is from one source but it's a source who's familiar with the process.
00:07:44
Speaker
Now, at some point, those negotiations were ended. And it was decided that the objects would go to auction at a Derbyshire-based auctioneer called Hanson's, which we talked about before on Watching Brief. It's famously headed up by Charlie Hanson, who's a BBC TV personality. Yeah, a darling of bargain hunters.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. He's a daytime. He's a regular time TV. He's got this sort of cheeky chappy persona, which under which is a very sharp businessman. And basically, Hansen's have made something with speciality in selling metal detected items. And in this case, they, the objects went to auction and were sold to a London based dealer called David Aaron.
00:08:37
Speaker
for £185,000. What's interesting here, this comes in the context, as you say, of this same auction house being very good at positioning, especially ancient and even prehistoric metal items, to be sold for very high prices. I think recently or last year or something,
00:09:05
Speaker
Covid timeline, so I sort of lose track of when we talk about things sometimes. We discussed an Iron Age series of metal items linked with equine horse art and right horse riding, which technically was being sold
00:09:26
Speaker
in a very, you know, above board way, but it's the positioning, it's the we, it's taking this stuff out of the conversations with the museum and putting it into a sort of a public realm where advertising in particular becomes key. It is the conversation that surrounds the artefact that then positions it to be bought at a certain price, I think, and Hanson seems to be particularly good at manufacturing that interest.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's right. I'll read you just quickly. This is the way that Hansel's presented it in their auction catalogue. This is the brief description, a much longer description, which ties in with lots of academic references and so on and so on and so on. But this is how they pitched it to the punters who were just looking at the first paragraph.
00:10:13
Speaker
The Rydale Ritual Bronzes, a unique assemblage of Roman ritual artifacts from Yorkshire in May 2020, approximately 20 miles north of York, the Roman city of Everarcombe, two friends, Mark Diddley and James Spark, unearthed an amazing assemblage of Roman bronze work consisting of a large bust, a horse and rider figurine, a zoomorphic knife handle and a pendulum. This assemblage almost certainly represents a set of ritual equipment buried as one deposit in the closing decades of the second century.
00:10:44
Speaker
And the estimate it gives was 70 to 90,000 pounds. Now, as you can see, that is less than half of what it eventually sold for. The lower end of the estimate is less than half of what it eventually sold for. And those kind of estimates are classic come on and buy me estimates from auctioneers who wanted to drive the price.
00:11:10
Speaker
same thing happened with the piece of iron age equipment, horse equipment that you mentioned just now? I would invite people to take a look at this text actually because it's written in a way that to my dyslexic eye is very unfriendly but also actually to I think to anyone who's accustomed to reading for example academic texts or you know papers it's written in it's a block of text it's not really paragraph properly
00:11:35
Speaker
It's barely spaced in a way that's very user friendly, but it is packed, absolutely packed with references to Wikipedia. There's a JSTOR article there, there's a positive antiquities scheme link chucked in there, and actually a couple of those links in fact.
00:11:53
Speaker
They're using the work of archaeologists and others not so much to talk about the cultural context and the body of research that goes into the understanding of an artefact necessarily, but rather to establish value. There's also actually a British Museum link in there as well, actually, I've just spotted. This is the use of, I suppose, historiosity as a
00:12:23
Speaker
adding to intrinsic worth of these bronze artefacts. It's again, it's not illegal, but it is very much a redeployment of archaeological and historical facts and research and fact finding to increase the price of artefacts.
00:12:41
Speaker
Now, what that then means is that presumably in a museum, if you want, we can go hypothetical at this point, Andy, a museum who may have started a conversation where they were going to buy something for a certain price that maybe, I don't know, maybe 1 18th of what eventually was the sale price of an artifact, you know, 20% or something.
00:13:07
Speaker
is actually forced to now be buying these things at what is deemed to be market level and market rates. Now, there's a slight rabbit, rabbit assault aside here. And so I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who commented on a watching brief video who asked what I thought of the truth, the fact that apparently the British Museum buys at low levels and sells artifacts on at profit.
00:13:36
Speaker
Of course, this person couldn't provide any proof for their assertions. But it's interesting that this is what's in the bloodstream. Once the artifact is moved into this sort of marketplace, it's all about value, it's all about apparent market rates, however the market is in fact being established.
00:13:55
Speaker
And this market is not only sucking more money than has to be sucked out of the public purse, it's also, if we look at the art newspaper link that we've included below, a market that is crammed potentially with people who are also selling fakes.
00:14:12
Speaker
a New York dealer arrested for selling cookie cutter manufactured goods as authentic antiques. This is actually a story from a couple of weeks ago, but recently came to the attention of the Times and the New York Times last week. So I'm linking, this was actually published in the art newspaper on the 26th of August, but people may have seen this last week in the Times, for example.
00:14:35
Speaker
So is that what we're examining here, and I suppose implicitly objecting to, is the slightly cynical manoeuvring of artefacts into a position where, I guess, you and I, as taxpayers, are having to pay more than we otherwise might do, in the context of museums purchasing artefacts? Not necessarily directly in the case of the Rydale Horde, I have to say.
00:15:04
Speaker
this is something, this is a devil's bargain that was made a long time ago. Property law in the UK is such that objects like this, if they're not, if they don't, you know, if these come up on an archaeological site, there are agreements before a space put in the ground about fines and where fines are going to go and where they're going to be deposited.
00:15:27
Speaker
and if these are turned up on an archaeological site like for example Petuaria where we were working in July on a Roman site of exactly this period, then there would have been no question that those objects would have ended up in, you know, these belongs in a museum. So do you! Sorry.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yes, exactly. It's the fact that they were found on private land by private individuals. And with the agreement of the landowner, the negotiations went forward because they weren't covered by the Treasury Act.
00:16:05
Speaker
that everything that happened was perfectly legal. Hansen's will say that it's perfectly legitimate for them to promote objects and to price them competitively and so on and so on and so on. But the overall effect of this is you're quite right. Basically, it drives the market. Any metal detectorists seeing this will see more pound signs in front of their eyes by going to auction than maybe, for example, coming to a private arrangement with the local museum.
00:16:32
Speaker
or even donating to the local museum which is many ethical metal detectors do do if the museum is still in a position to actually accession material these days which not all of them are. And incidentally I should say that of course there's no evidence that the British Museum sells its collection because legally it's not allowed to
00:16:53
Speaker
This is a rumor that is that is spread around for precisely those reasons. There's also a misunderstanding among many metal detectorists that because the treasure committee which assesses treasure finds and assesses value to treasure finds actually sits at the British Museum, meets at the British Museum and then uses British Museum experts that is somehow British Museum
00:17:15
Speaker
structure, it's not, it's separate, it's set up to administer the Treasure Act, which is something very different. Of course they'd say that, it's all a conspiracy. But anyway, the point is though, this is a system, British Museum aside, but even the British Museum as well actually, but this is a system which does not have all the money in the world.
Challenges in Heritage Management
00:17:36
Speaker
There's an article here from inyourarea.co.uk, oddly enough.
00:17:41
Speaker
where owners are being urged to claim back Heritage Centre items. The deadline has been set before unclaimed items will be taken away at Ashbourne's Heritage Centre. Apparently, Tuesday 30th November is the deadline by which items stored in the Heritage Centre are to be collected before the Town Council washes their hands of everything therein.
00:18:07
Speaker
Dozens of items were kept securely in the church street building, which was run by the late historian Trilby Shaw. And they are now in a state of limbo while volunteers scramble to catalogue them and work out who owns what. This is the system that's being gained, that's having these sorts of prices foisted forced upon it. And it's not great. It's also not great because that refrain
00:18:36
Speaker
It's perfectly legal. It's fine. It's perfectly legal. It's legal. It's legal where I operate or whatever, however people want to try and justify themselves. It's something that we also come to in our second focus for this week's Watching Brief, and that is the sale of human remains, the sale of, in this instance, bones online.
00:18:57
Speaker
Interestingly, the ABC News article that we highlighted, or we chose to highlight this story, we'll try and find another link below below, we'll also link to this one as well out of interest, at the moment has the story listed as oops page unavailable, whether that's because of the nature of the article or not, who can say at this stage.
00:19:18
Speaker
But we started looking into this and we were led to the recommendation for today's interview.
Ethics of Trading Human Remains
00:19:29
Speaker
Weren't we, Andy?
00:19:31
Speaker
That's right. We wanted to cover the issue of the sale of human remains, which has far fewer regulations around it than many people might expect, and particularly given the current focus on decolonization and the treatment of Indigenous archaeology in the past and the, shall we say, the sometimes less than
00:19:57
Speaker
less than legitimate ways of obtaining indigenous artifacts exercised by museums in the past. We wanted to look at this and we started doing some research and we were led to two things. We were led to a New York based website
00:20:14
Speaker
and we're also led to the TikTok account of Stephanie Black who is an Australian archaeologist who's currently studying in the UK but has used her TikTok account to highlight the issues of human remains and the treatment of human remains and the sale of human remains and we invited Stephanie to join us and this is the interview we reported earlier.
00:20:40
Speaker
I guess on this week's watching brief is Stephanie Black who trained in Australia at Macquarie University as an archaeologist and is now at Durham University in the UK studying for an MA but you might know her better as Steph the archaeologist on TikTok and in particular through some work she's been doing recently, some videos she's been publishing recently about an American
00:21:04
Speaker
a human osteology dealer, for want of a better description, a company called John's Bones, which has raised some wider issues about the ethics of presenting and handling human remains that Stephanie's been highlighting. Stephanie, welcome to Watching Brief. How did you first discover the John's Bones story and what made you want to respond to it in your TikTok videos?
00:21:30
Speaker
Basically, he was one of the first accounts I saw, and I had originally followed him. And then, you know, we just get weird vibes from someone, because his whole thing is that he has this huge wall of spines, a human spine. So he's known on TikTok as, oh, the spines guy. And then I had a follower just like, send me a message and go, hey, I've just got like really weird vibes from this guy. Could you just do like a video? And so I just started doing some research on him. And I thought, oh, it would just be like a generic kind of
00:21:59
Speaker
He does seem to know his law. Technically, what he's doing is legal. And then I found the Sami skull and I was like, oh, that isn't good. And then you kind of dig deeper into his business. And there were just a lot of red flags with how the whole thing was being run.
00:22:16
Speaker
Let's start with the legality issue because that's the first thing that dealers like him will probably say is that certainly in New York, where he's based, he appears not to break any state laws. And in the UK, for example, the owning and sale of historic human remains isn't covered by licensing. We do have the Human Tissue Authority, which
00:22:45
Speaker
There's a certain amount of regulation, but it's pretty loose and educational use is one of the exemptions, I think I'm correct in saying. So what is the reason for highlighting something which essentially is a legal trade? It's because of something that isn't morally right. Like there's a lot of justification on this count. Like if people raise questions and go, Hey, this seems a little odd. He's like, Oh, but it's legal.
00:23:12
Speaker
And I don't know if you have to work so hard to justify that your work is legal when so many people are like going, there's something not quite right there, really.
00:23:24
Speaker
Do you think that in this area, the sort of ethical view of archaeologists is running ahead, perhaps, of the public and the wider media? Certainly, I've been aware of the time that I've been working in archaeology. The sensitivity around human remains has become much more pronounced. It's much more a part of our training and our daily working lives, if you like, and particularly when it comes to the remains of ethnic peoples.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Like, all the sites I've worked on, like, like, even before you go out to start digging, you always have like a big conversation around the ethics. So like, if you are excavating, he remains like not taking photos, not publishing them online. You know, not even giving people like the skeleton a name or anything, like being very, very conscious that this is a person that this is, you know, this was someone you lived and so we should afford them respect.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah, which doesn't seem to be something that John is doing necessarily. Obviously, he's not here to answer for himself, although he's not back when he's coming forward himself on social media. And obviously, we're deliberately not linking to his site, although he's very easily findable by Google, other search engines are available. So if any of our viewers do want to go and look at what he's doing, it's perfectly open to do so.
00:24:49
Speaker
What he does say is that, as well as being legal, he operates ethically, that there are checks and balances. He says explicitly on his website, and I just put it up here to quote,
00:25:07
Speaker
in the sales section of his website, he says that his products are responsibly sourced, that we do not purchase or accept plus theology that's been acquired in irresponsible or illegal manners. After completing the form, offering something to the company, all items will be assessed by a John's Bones representative and an offer will be issued. So he's claiming that
00:25:31
Speaker
the work doesn't, you know, there are legal checks and balances throughout and it's assessed expertly. Are you convinced by that? I think he thinks he's doing the right thing, but when I was looking at the staff members, he is still, I believe, still studying at Parsons School of Design in New York. He's quite young and I was like, oh,
00:25:56
Speaker
you know, are there more like professionals behind him? And the only person with any osteological experience was an individual who didn't have a last name nor a photo on his account and who just had their BA.
00:26:10
Speaker
which to me, if you're running a business like this, you need more than that. And it also said in their bio that they assess the bones by photos. And anyone who said any dealing with bones know you can't, I mean, it's difficult enough to assess bones, let alone doing it only through photographs.
00:26:30
Speaker
Okay, so moving forward, you mentioned a particular issue, and one of the things that attracted you to the, or caught your attention was the issue of a Sami skull. Now I understand from the background we did on this before we started recording this segment, that there are questions over whether that actually was in the possession of John's bones legally, that how it came to be in the United States was somewhat opaque.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah. Honestly, it's not altogether clear because he did take the skull down from his website. Like when I made my first video, I was like, oh, I should maybe like take a photo of this. So I do have a photo sitting on my phone that I have given to some Sami people who have asked for it so they can pass it onto their own representatives to see how this came about. Because I know in the US, it is like the sale of boats in most places in the US is legal. It's just indigenous remains.
00:27:31
Speaker
But as the Sami aren't a North American indigenous group, they aren't protected. They don't have those sort of same protections. Right. Now, extending the discussion to indigenous peoples, and I'm asking you really, as archaeologists trained in Australia, do you think, as we said at the beginning, you trained at Macquarie, do you think that
00:27:57
Speaker
training in an area where Indigenous archaeology is very much a part of practice and everyday practice for people going off to work in the sector. Do you think you get a better grounding in the practicalities and ethics of this kind of work than maybe in the UK where we don't have the same day-to-day sensitivities? Broadly speaking, I mean, there have been cases in the UK, for example, of Jewish sites where obviously, again, the treatment of human remains is very much tied in with cultural practice.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it was part of my degree, like you're very sort of conscious and kind of we were told, yeah, if you do work on like a site in Australia and you come across like Indigenous or suspected Indigenous human remains, like you basically don't touch them.
00:28:40
Speaker
like maybe even the site can get shut down until people can check it. It is a very hot topic as well, indigenous remains. There's a lot of factors, not only archaeological, but like political and the whole history of Australia and the treatment of indigenous peoples that also impact how that goes about.
Withdrawing Human Remains from Sale
00:29:02
Speaker
And I would say actually in the UK certainly there have been cases in recent years when UK museums have returned human remains in particular to Indigenous peoples in Australia, the Pacific, and I think also in North America. As we sort of come to an end of this segment,
00:29:23
Speaker
In the UK, certainly, there was a case, for example, in 2019 of an auction house which appeared to be about to offer Saxon human remains, medieval human remains that came from a private collection. There was a lot of pushback in the archaeological sector from that and the
00:29:45
Speaker
The skull which had been nicknamed and apparently gendered by the auction house Charlie was very clearly withdrawn from from sale.
00:29:56
Speaker
that was a sort of a one-off and it was almost like a sort of firefighting response. Do you think the archaeology sector needs to come up with a more coherent and perhaps some more detailed and proactive strategy in this area? I think people are obviously aware of it and I do think archaeologists are kind of conscious of it but
00:30:22
Speaker
I feel like maybe there could be more done because there are private collectors out there. I mean, I've found more of like some from the UK or on TikTok and you know, it's like one of those things that yes, technically it is legal, but I do think archeologists can talk about and go, hey, like considering the history of archeology and how in essence we've like, we've had that promotion of human remains and the kind of whole history we have, it's now our job to sort of respond
00:30:52
Speaker
to be doing just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical.
00:30:59
Speaker
Absolutely. Now, and just to finish, you've mentioned there that there are collectors active on TikTok, which is one of the newer social media platforms. You're very active on TikTok. And as I said, we will link to your account so that people can watch your videos on this area and hopefully follow you going forward. But do you think that
00:31:26
Speaker
The fact that a lot of this kind of thing happens on sales platforms, on social media platforms that aren't the traditional archaeological media, aren't the traditional archaeological journals of record and so on. Do you think that is why maybe these things slip under the radar and aren't given maybe the amount of coverage and thought that they perhaps weren't?
00:31:54
Speaker
I think it's like such a big issue. Like, obviously, like the incident was like, it's one social media, it's kind of one user. I mean, there's already more people on there. And like, TikTok is such a new social media. Like, I'm sure it's way more established on places like Twitter and Facebook. And it's kind of, it's so big, not one person. I don't think not one group can fully deal with it because it is so complex and it is everywhere. And it is very hard to police, I think.
00:32:25
Speaker
One final question. It's the sort of monarch for a day question.
00:32:31
Speaker
If you were suddenly in charge of the CBA, Castlebridge Archaeology, or the Charlton Institute for Archaeologists, one of the main archaeological bodies in the country for the day, and you were told that you could do one thing in this area to bring that ethical view, that ethical stance and in-depth thought to the area of human remains, what would you do?
00:33:00
Speaker
Oh, that's a tough question. I think I would start doing something to look at the legality of it, because I think if you start pushing into is this legal, especially with the murky history and the origin of a lot of these remains,
00:33:16
Speaker
because like John says that well I get them from you know doctors offices you know people have just had them sitting in their attics it's like okay but where did those people get them from and so I think if you really consider the legality and study that I think that would be really good. I think that's a nice nutty complex thought to end on Stephanie Black thank you very much for joining the watching brief.
00:33:41
Speaker
Thank you. So, John's Bones. It's unfortunate, really, that that's the name of his business, because I also know an archaeologist called Bones Jones, who is a perfectly lovely, epic, slightly eccentric man. He's the work, possibly still works, at the Archaeological Trust.
00:34:00
Speaker
But aside from the name, what's your takeaway from this sort of offshoot of this commodification of the artifactual past that we've been discussing? Obviously these aren't metal remains, this isn't treasure per se, but it is a key part of our physical heritage.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, look, I think a few sort of short takeaways from it, apart from the fact that, you know, a commercial auction, the House of Hanson's has had a walk on part in both of our stories, more than a walk on part in our first story. Yeah. And through doing nothing other than its legitimate commercial business, which is perfectly legal. And also, it should be said its business is also to increase the value of the things it wants to sell.
00:34:51
Speaker
exactly you know it's there to generate interest i get that exactly it's it's function is to sell stuff to the public the public is willing to pay for and to make as much money in the process as it can yes that's that's how that you know that's how capitalism works it's absolutely absolutely fine and legal in in in the uk as as we sit here in in 2021 um but aside from that um i think first of all
00:35:16
Speaker
a lot of the sale and
00:35:23
Speaker
presentation of this material for sale is happening on electronic platforms, digital platforms, it's happening outside of the purview of journals of record and things like that. And, you know, we picked up on the story and on Stephanie's work from TikTok, which is one of the newest social media platforms. And I think it just shows how quickly
00:35:48
Speaker
things like this can appear, can be examined, can move on, and possibly without actually the great and the good in the archaeological and heritage sector even being aware of them in many cases. It's only through platforms like this and other people who work in social media who then try and transfer the knowledge into the wider sector that these things are on the radar at all.
00:36:16
Speaker
Well, and in that sense, it's also a market that's not actually happening on a market site. It's not, this isn't happening on, it does happen on eBay, but in this instance, this case study is not, for example, in that sort of market. It's actually, it's a
00:36:32
Speaker
very similar to Hansen's actually, it's a publicisation of things that are available that then lead to people's interest in purchasing them. So yeah, it's interesting. It's, regardless of the ethical side of it, legally, it's quite legitimate. And I think
00:36:52
Speaker
looking at both aspects of it, then perhaps the wider heritage world, the wider archaeological world needs to take cognizance of what's going on. Be aware or be made aware of what's going on on platforms like TikTok.
00:37:13
Speaker
like eBay, and other sales platforms, and come up with a joined up response that if something's not ethical, then, you know, as a sector, we say it's not ethical and campaign against it. I mean, when again, when we were preparing this, I had a look at the British Association for biological anthropology, which is a
00:37:37
Speaker
an expert group that looks at areas around this. And it has a clear stance that it sees the quote, the trading of human remains for commercial gain unacceptable.
UK Laws on Human Remains Trade
00:37:53
Speaker
So there's a clear ethical position. It's also worth saying that certainly as far as the UK is concerned, if human remains are less than 100 years old,
00:38:08
Speaker
then they come under the Human Tissue Act 2004, which means that unless a license has been obtained, public display certainly is not allowed.
00:38:24
Speaker
They also point out that many of the human remains that are on the market are used in medical schools and things like that. And possibly, obviously there's no chain of evidence here, but the kind of thing that might turn up at a company like John's Bones come from the Far East. There was a trade in human remains from the Far East into Western.
00:38:52
Speaker
medical schools, for example, in the 20th century. And relatively recently, both China and India have banned the export of human remains India in 1985, China as recently as 2008. Right. Right. So
00:39:17
Speaker
It may well be that something that's on sale in Judge Burns Legally in New York may not be legal to certainly display in the UK. Historic material, older than 100 years, it's a different matter.
00:39:34
Speaker
No, but it's definitely not a very dodgy legal area that exactly. Yeah, that the refrain, it's all perfectly legal simply doesn't doesn't quite better way. It's all perfectly legal if if it is. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, and it's interesting to me that, I mean, you mentioned journals of record, you mentioned the fact that in that sense, these conversations, these sales, this interest is being drummed up surrounding a business based in New York is happening
Should Human Remains Be Displayed?
00:40:10
Speaker
Well outside the the the purview of most academics in particular for example, but also as well. It's a conversation that is happening despite the fact that for many years now for a long time for as long as I've been aware of it.
00:40:26
Speaker
Museums, studies in particular, have been discussing and debating the use of human remains. Do we really need to have that person's body or their skeleton on display in order to talk about them? For example, could we use drawings, photography, 3D printing, so on and so forth? These are conversations that are happening within the sector.
00:40:44
Speaker
But it's interesting to me how not only has those other conversations seemingly not permeating into, for example, the sale of that sort of market, regardless of who's doing the purchasing. But also as well, it's the reaction that we see in comments on these stories and on this sort of news, where
00:41:05
Speaker
Excuse me, people sort of say, well, you know, they've been dead for ages. It doesn't really matter. You know, they don't know they're dead. These remains are really old or whatever. And indeed on, for example, John Bones's website, he indicates that he expects people to just have bones in the attic. You know, oh, do you happen to have some bones lying around? I'll buy them from you.
00:41:29
Speaker
But as quickly comes to mind, if you think about it for more than a few minutes, and you actually think outside your personal embodied existence, those bones came from someone else. They were inside someone else. They were another person.
00:41:48
Speaker
those bones weren't always donated, for example. In the case of, say, here in the UK, some medical schools, infamously in Edinburgh, were purchasing people who had been executed or people who were being maybe buried and not buried, so on and so forth. So the trafficking of human remains is not new,
00:42:09
Speaker
but therefore there's an awful lot of bones floating around, stuff that may be in old medical collections, stuff that may be in people's personal collections that have questions. Or not so old, you're quite right to raise those issues and I'll finish with just sort of one observation which is slightly personal anecdotal but also I think is illustrative.
00:42:38
Speaker
First of all, in terms of provenance, that Saxon material that was sold by Hansen's, the only medieval material that was sold by Hansen's, including the skull, which was eventually withdrawn from sale, if it ever was on sale, it was slightly ambiguous as to what was going on, will lead to a blog piece by Howard Williams, who's a specialist in this area, which explores the background of Hansen's sale.
00:43:02
Speaker
But that material was derived from an excavation by a school teacher who was an amateur archaeologist of a Saxon cemetery in the 1960s and the material was being disposed of by his wife after he died. So that is the route by which that material came into the commercial market.
00:43:24
Speaker
And the other thing I would say, and again, this is very personal and anecdotal, and it's why I'm torn about the whole subject, and I'm having a constant debate with myself, with myself, whenever we talk about things like this, whenever my work brings me into contact with things like human remains, and that is at
00:43:48
Speaker
one level particularly as an archaeologist who works in the archaeology of modern conflict and I've dug on the western front and the protocols there for example the British Ministry of Defence and the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre which oversees the recovery of British and Commonwealth War Dead does not allow the taking of photography
00:44:09
Speaker
showing a sharing of images without express permission and in most cases that's not given and they say that's that's down to a privacy and respect issue particularly because next of kin they will be involved when we're trying to identify somebody who's recovered for example on the western front or from an aircraft that crashed in world war two
00:44:26
Speaker
So it is absolutely not allowed. It has the same level of respect and structure as around certain areas of indigenous archaeology in Australia. At the same time, one of the reasons, it is dignity. Absolutely. It's about dignity, it's about respect. At the same time, one of the reasons, in fact, almost my first archaeological memory,
00:44:49
Speaker
is a primary school visit to the British Museum and the mummy room and the desiccated display of the body of the pre-donastic Egyptian person who is nicknamed Ginger. Right. It was an incredibly powerful image. It stayed with me for now something like 50 years since I made that first visit.
00:45:14
Speaker
And I, you know, I, you know, the, because it's about people and, you know, some ultimate wheeler famously said, archaeology is digging up people. And this is about as intimate with the people as we get. And so it's absolutely tied up with our archaeology. I just think it's a constant debate about how we handle that relationship with those people who are people like us, with respect
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah okay yeah I can understand that and in that sense human remains are dramatic by definition they can be powerful they can be instructive and I suppose a key question is do they always have to be on display and indeed
00:46:00
Speaker
in this context should they be on sale? Indeed, should any of the heritage that we've been talking about be subject to the sort of crass marketeering that we have been discussing today? Exactly. Does cultural value equate to commercial value? And I would argue it never does. Cultural value is always more important.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah. Although apparently it doesn't stop some people from using cultural value to wrap the price of something. It's complicated. It is complicated. But I mean this has been an interesting watching brief for the week. Hopefully
00:46:37
Speaker
I mean, by definition this conversation is going to continue in some capacity at some point. Hopefully this hasn't been too confusing or distressing in some cases for you in terms of thinking about this, you guys at home. This is something that I think sometimes archaeologists can sometimes forget.
00:46:54
Speaker
you know, dealing with bodies is something that we do and that we think about a lot, but this is something that's also worth while thinking about. How we value, how we, whether we treasure all things that should be treasured or not. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you for your time, Andy, as ever this week. And until next time, guys, do take care. Bye-bye.
00:47:18
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:47:34
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.