From my time majoring in Arch, I’d say the rule of thumb is:
“Is the culture the body came from vanished or changed to the point where no one has a personal stake in it.”
So for example, vikings are long since gone. Modern northern europeans are generally a completely different culture, therefore not grave robbing. Same with Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, etc…
Indigenous tribes in North America and Australia for example, still very much around and still very much grave robbing (though that opinion is controversial)
Basically, if the existing culture still shows reverence to those ancestors…leave them alone. If the existing culture no longer honours them as ancestors, dig baby dig.
Is your intent to learn from and preserve a lost culture, or profit off of stolen goods?
I feel like it’s pretty simple.
Even if there was something to learn I don’t want anyone digging up my grandma. If someone’s descendants are saying “Don’t do that to our ancestor’s grave, it’s disrespectful in our culture” then you’re defiling a grave.
I thought these days it was less digging and more radar/sonar type stuff? Trying to preserve the original site or something.
likely yes. I was in university in the late 90s. My knowledge is very out of date.
I feel like it should be simpler: did the culture the body came from have good enough records in other ways that we would be unlikely to learn anything by digging up the body that we couldn’t learn by studying other records? Then leave it alone.
If they failed to keep good enough records, and knowledge would be gained by the study, then study away.
It’s a government permit thing, not a time thing. If you go an dig up an Etruscan grave on your own it is absolutely grave robbing.
I think it’s more about intent and what you do with the findings and who gains from it. If you and your team announce your plans ahead of time, document everything meticulously, deliver the pieces to a museum or archive, publish papers and deliver seminars and attend conferences on it… it’s probably archaeology. The public then has at least some access to the value of your work.
If you and your associates do it all in secret, sell the artifacts to some rich asshole (esp. via a fence), and cover your tracks, that seems a lot more like grave robbing. You’ve stolen all the value in that case.
Hmm, sounds like a lot of the Egyptian Pharoah ‘research’ a few centuries ago.
More than 20 minutes
I’ll set a timer.
Archaeologists can’t afford zydrate, so they resort to grave robbing.
