Keep Digging.

While on the subject of HAD it’s useful to point out that they have no more legitimate claim upon the religious disposition of human remains found in museums and other collections than do the Christian churches or anyone else. Yes, the word pagan is used to describe the religious beliefs of the pre-Christian peoples of the British Isles and the handful of people who compose HAD use the same term to describe themselves yet there is no continuous epistemological link between the two groups and no reason for HAD to claim special authority in this issue simply on account of a shared adjective.

It’s unclear why the ancient dead, long departed from their bones, should give a fig about the location of their mortal remains or about the feelings of modern career pagans on the matter, yet HAD reserves for itself the option of pursuing the interring or other disposal of these remains during some 21st Century C.E. made-up ritual fabricated from Arcadian sentiment and mangled ritual magic. If the ancient dead are found buried or otherwise intentionally disposed of then this happened with all due ceremony and honour already a long time ago accompanied by authentic rituals and beliefs and HAD may as well be chanting and wailing over a beef broth bone. If the ancient dead are found in circumstances which lead their discoverers to believe they were not buried with due ceremony and honour then there will very likely have been a social reason why such a person is left to rot where they dropped and it’s not the place of modern pagans to contradict them. What doesn’t seem to figure in HAD’s field of visions is the fact that the term ancient dead refers to more than the rags, bones and hanks of hair they prefer to retroactively claim as their own people but also to the people who placed these items in the ground in the first place. Their religious beliefs - and HAD have no better insight into what these may have been than informed non-pagans - should be respected and observed.

The ancient dead, dear friends, are long gone from here and even were they still here wouldn’t understand a word of the rituals smudge-muttered over their remains anymore than we would understand theirs. Broadly, we are each the descendents of the ancient dead, their kin, and their bones are their legacy to us, gifts left behind that we might learn of their lives and their deeds. They are as much the kin of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins as they are the kin of anyone who calls themselves a druid or a witch or a heathen. Either we recognise the fact that these bones are dead gifts - and the word dead is operative here - from which we might learn with respect for the manner in which these gifts are kept or, in this multicultural age where religion is unhinged from ethnic origin, we dispose of these with all due ceremony, and I mean all due ceremony.