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Some kid had been hurt playing in a graveyard by a gravestone falling over.
He wasn't just hurt he was killed. The council paid out compensation after getting slated at the fatal accident inquiry. I imagine that caused a lot of other councils to up their game.
When I die I want my remains to be spread over the South Downs. I don’t want to be cremated though.
Landmine?
Quite like the idea of cremation via power station. Or put me in the food recycling.
In the Uk there is some law about this – eg I knew I guy who studied bones and was allowed to dig up Napoleonic war dead in the UK.
I love how this post stands for almost everything about the internet.
Wierdest H&S visit was to a school extension on top of an old graveyard in Southwark. Everything was being re-interred down towards Barking and the contractors were separating all the bones form the old woodwork and sieving each loading shovel of earth removed.The whole area was tented over to avoid upsetting the kids still at lessons.
Anyone know how much gas it takes in a crematorium to fully combust a human body, either with or without a cardboard/ wicker/ wooden box? Seems like the risk of quite a bit of additional and avoidable CO2 to me.
My oh is an archaeologist, so I asked her. To knowingly dig up human remains requires a licence. Obviously your not going to be granted the licence to dig up remains of any age without good reason.
All remains must be treated the same, wether a 3000 rear old corpse or a 50 year old corpse, under tents out of sight and treated with respect.
If a body is unknowingly exhumed, if say the bones are mixed with animal bones or not easily recognised a licence can be applied for afterwards.
More than once a mattoc has gone through a skull. It's not all trowels and paintbrushes
Never go into a warehouse during a full moon!
Especially if you're a dyslexic priest. That could be very embarrassing.
Quite like the idea of cremation via power station.
You'd have to be ground up into quite small pieces to go through the gas turbine.
I'd like to be shot into the sea in a trebuchet. Cremated or whole, don't mind.
Or; because cremation would cause more pollution, how about maceration and composting?
Its a good idea environmentally but its tarnishes the occasion if mourners have to put ear defenders on as the coffin glides through the curtain into the chipper
Its maybe also less elegant than an urn of ashes to be handed handed uncle Alan's mortal remains in four 25 kilo polythene sacks to be tearfully forked in at his favourite beauty spot (which seems to be a lot more popular with rats these days)
Quite like the idea of cremation via power station
I'm pretty sure new crematoria are more efficient but possibly not self-sufficient yet. Unless they get to keep and sell all the gold teeth
and was allowed to dig up Napoleonic war dead in the UK.
You'll probably find napoleonic war dead in any field in the uk if you sieve fine enough.
The origin of the line 'I'll grind their bones to make my bread' in Jack and the Beanstalk has its origins in a term for war-dead 'They gave their bones to make your bread' which is a reference to the practice of gathering up the dead from the battlefields of Europe bringing them back to the uk, grinding them up and selling them as fertiliser.
Its only since the WW1 that we've honoured and memorialised the soldiers rather than the generals from conflicts, before that, to all intents and purposes we ate them. There were dedicated 'Bone Grinders' in Hull - businesses that received cargoes of bodies from the Napoleonic battlefields and sold them on as fertiliser.
It's more about how much loot is in there, isn't it? And by loot I mine items of archaeological value of course.
I loved the darkness of 2000AD; they used to have some cracking themes and ideas of a dystopian future. 21st century reality is far more mundane and boring.
Anyone know where full stories can be found? Is there an archive available? I'd love to read through some of those.
Or perhaps a motorway flyover.
Appropriate user name…
businesses that received cargoes of bodies from the Napoleonic battlefields and sold them on as fertiliser.
What a splendidly heartwarming anecdote to start my weekend off with😂😂 I actually remember watching a documentary a while back where they talked about this. Grim..
I’d like to be made in to an entrant on the Bad Taxidermy website.
+1 for repossessed joke😂
Maccruiskeen, that stuff’s fascinating, any references for further reading?
Wasn’t there a crematorium somewhere in UK built next to a swimming pool so the pool could be heated by the furnace, iirc Daily Mail was outraged - seemed like an ingenious use of resources to me!
Fwiw ideally I’d like to be fed to pigs if I can’t heat a pool!
Wasn't it viv stanshaw who suggested "standing them upright in the victory garden as there's bags of calcium and goodness in the buggers yet"
Wasn’t it viv stanshaw who suggested “standing them upright in the victory garden as there’s bags of calcium and goodness in the buggers yet”
I think he was channelling Jeremy Bentham who's head still needs to attend meetings at UCL. IIRC its still his really body on display but not his real head. It went a bit nasty looking apparently so that's kept in a box and only comes out when important business is discussed.
He had the idea that rather than having an avenue of beech trees leading to your country house you'd have the stuffed and mounted corpses of your ancestors
gas it takes in a crematorium to fully combust a human body
Quite a lot and there are sizeable bone fragments left that have to be pulverised to get that run of your loved & probably bits of others mixed in too!
It’s more about how much loot is in there, isn’t it? And by loot I mine items of archaeological value of course.
People interpret grave goods as a signifier of high status - that people buried with valuable possessions suggests they were venerated individuals.
Maybe it was just the grave of someone who was such objectionable arsehole that people couldn't bear the sight of anything that reminded them of him. They've basically been fly-tipped with all their gaudy shit that was cluttering up the place..
Archaeologist here. I've seen hundreds of skeletons but don't excavate them myself as we have specialists for that. Never used a tent but do use sun netting (this is not in the UK). Preservation is highly variable and depends largely on soil chemistry. Sometimes the bone is solid, sometimes like cheese, sometimes vanished. 'Field anthropology' can help determine whether a coffin or shroud had been used, largely by looking at whether bone movements occurred in a void. For example, if you're straight in the dirt your bones tend to rest in anatomical position but if you were in a box your jaw will drop, fingers and toes spread out etc. The positioning of grave goods can also be indicative, with 'wall effects', alignments where objects had been resting against a coffin.
Cremation wouldn't (traditionally) protect you from our prying eyes and hands 😀, as mentioned above, funerary urns contain plenty of fragments, sometimes identifiable.
Then we'll rip your teeth out to know what you ate and where you grew up, and plunder your Petrous portion (inner ear) for aDNA testing. Then you get your own set of finest quality ziplocks for all your sets of bones. Bloody luxury!
They’ve basically been fly-tipped with all their gaudy shit that was cluttering up the place..
MrsMC will need burying in quite a large skip then. Maybe a shipping container....🤔
Ha got to love the way there is an expert on almost everything posting here. 🙂
What is the reason for using the inner ear I guess it just usually has the most DNA material remaining?
@grum, yup it's just a matter of preservation likelihood. Teeth can work too. I work (ed before Mar 2020) in the tropics so our success rate is about 5%...
Being morbidly objective about such things, the idea that you can let dead bodies rest in place forever is basically impractical.
When you think about the length of time that the country has been inhabited by humans (about 40,000 years) and the total number of people that amounts to, then consider the potential number of bodies that can be, then consider that you're likely to be digging up, or digging close to, bodies just by doing some moderate excavation work anywhere that there is a few feet or more of ground cover. Do this in or around a Village, Town, City or even just a point where roads cross and the chances go up again...
Arthur C Clarke stated in 2001 a space odyssey that "Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.", apparently that's pretty close to the mark: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16870579
Or; because cremation would cause more pollution, how about maceration and composting
It’s a thing, not sure how available it is but it’s better than cremation from a CO2 point of view - linky
Sky burial FTW though.
Ha got to love the way there is an expert on almost everything posting here.
I know - go to repository for archeology and cheesemaking at present. Maybe we should cross the streams and start a thread about artisan cave aged bog butter.
Being morbidly objective about such things, the idea that you can let dead bodies rest in place forever is basically impractical.
Thats why the Toynbee Tiler recommends we use Jupiter for the purpose
People interpret grave goods as a signifier of high status – that people buried with valuable possessions suggests they were venerated individuals.
There's much confusion/debate now about the meaning of things like mirrors, swords, spears etc as a signifier of either high status or even whether the buried are even men or women.
Plenty of churches round my way that have been converted to houses, I always thought having a graveyard as a garden must be a bit weird
Or perhaps a motorway flyover.
A variant of nominative determinism…?
Anyone know where full stories can be found? Is there an archive available? I’d love to read through some of those.
@bridges if you go to the site or download the app you can buy some of the digital compendiums, progs or just subscribe. There are a few free copies of things in there too.
Regarding owning a graveyard, the church in the village of Ford, just outside of Chippenham, which is where my family is from, was sold to a bloke who’s a cabinet maker, I believe, and he has to maintain the graveyard as there are people in the village with family buried there.
In my case, though, apart from my dad who was cremated, my family are buried in Slaughterford, a tiny village in the next valley, and the earliest burials there are from the beginning of the last century, including one relative who was killed at the battle of Arras in 1917, so it’s over a century now.
It’s a tiny churchyard, the church was trashed by Cromwell and his troops on their way to Bristol, to subjugate the Irish, and it was the Victorians who restored it, in an unusual display of good taste! I’d very much like to be buried there, it’s a beautiful, peaceful place, and there are still burials taking place there.
This thread has reminded me of the fuss ‘King Arthur Pendragon’ and his ‘Druid’ mates are making about Neolithic remains that are on display in places like Avebury Museum, demanding that the remains of ‘his ancestors’ are re-buried, because it’s disrespectful.
As he’s an ex-biker from Yorkshire, I’m certain that any investigation into his distant ancestors will show Viking, rather than Britons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Uther_Pendragon
Eejits. #rollseyes
DG Rossetti had Elizabeth Siddall disinterred a year after she was buried to retrieve a book of poems he had penned.
I'd say when there's something that can be learned from it. ie plenty to learn about digging up 1000 or 4000 year old bodies. Not so much 10 year old bodies. But then again, if there's a pending court case and a body needs exhumed, then it's perfectly acceptable to do it to a recently buried person.
So aye, i'd say it's all down circumstance and what's to be gained from it i guess.
Me personally, I don't really care tbh, give the body to schools, or chuck it in the wheely bin for all i care. I'll be deed. 😆
I guess there is also a question of genetics in this too. When talking about how connected people actually are to the past.
Example my parents are each 50% genetically connected to me personally. Go back 3 generations to your great grand parents and they are only 12.5% each genetically relevant to you(takes me back to the 1950-70s when they died, before I was born). Go back 10 generations and you are talking around the 1700s give or take for most people. But the genetic relationship is really only something like 0.1% per "relative" at that level, I mean you've potentially got 1024 ancestors in that particular level alone (I personally believe the term "relative" is getting extremely tenuous at this point, I've got some lines going back to the 1500s on some of my branches, means not much to me tbh, far as i'm concerned these are common ancestors.).
Point I'm really getting at is the further you go back, the people we've buried become more of a common history rather than a personal history. So really at that point it's more about cultural norms than any individual considerations.
Me personally, I don’t really care tbh, give the body to schools
I think they prefer those 'computers for schools' vouchers. Although it would be an interesting conversation as to who got to take the School Cadaver home for the holidays.
😆 was kinda expecting that tbh.
I know – go to repository for archeology and cheesemaking at present. Maybe we should cross the streams and start a thread about artisan cave aged bog butter.
In an unlikely confluence of threads, before I worked in NPD in cheese and dairy (mainly cheddar and processed, but a bit of work on spreads as well), I worked in a butter factory. While I worked in the cheese place, I did my only GCSE.............in archaeology. (Every one of my GCSEs is A*, unlike my O levels..) I'm not claiming to be an authority on anything, though. It's all a long time ago and was just an evening class GCSE that interested me and I didn't take further. 😀
How did this not get the new TOTW?
We own a small graveyard
Is there no topic this place has knowledge of. I mean how common is owning a graveyard?
There are four in my village. Old Church, new church, overflow graveyard for new church, and a house built on the site of another old church which is no longer there but which has a graveyard as the garden.
I don't know if that one mentioned above is my 'around the corner neighbour' but if not there's at least two.
Actually, you do see quite a lot if churches being converted into houses. I wonder what they do with the crypts?