Legislation forces archaeologists to rebury finds

England, February 2011

The Ministry of Justice introduced in 2008 a controversial legislation that threatens to cripple archeological research.

This legislation requires all human remains excavated at digs in England and Wales to be reburied within two years, regardless of their age. That means scientists have too little time to study bones and other human remains of national and cultural significance before to reburied.

In that conditions a group of British archeologist has joined their force and send a letter to the ministry to complain about that legislation, they argued that removing this legislation would give archaeologists the option to study the archeological evidence with new scientific techniques that constantly emerge from research laboratories.

Duncan Sayer, an archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire says:

"This is a law that was not designed for archaeology and is doing a considerable amount of damage, and because of it we may prevent people in the future from ever being able to explore their past because we have destroyed it.”

When I saw the title of this new, and thought “How could this be possible?!”, Archeologist reburying things? , This can happen?

Well it does, it happens, in UK. I choose this article because I want to be an archeologist, I have to concern about the  problems on archaeology and defend the rights that too many times are broken , I suppose that the job of archeologist is excavated and found thing under the earth, NOT rebury what you found..

I think sometimes the politics are not good focused on the real problems that it has to resolve, like in this case, if the politicians get to know more about the consequences that involves the politics they do, maybe less problems show up.

                          The Guardian - Legislation forces archaeologists to rebury finds