5 ms·

One important reason is that the archaeologists excavating this site are by-and-large the direct ethnic descendants (and cultural inheritors) of the Anglo-Saxon

• mc32 4y ago
  What if the diggers are instead descendants of Celtic tribes, or Pictish or Jutes?
  • dbingham 4y ago
    Well all of the various tribes merged together for the most part. Most people in the UK are probably descendants of multiple of those old tribes. Another difference is that in the UK there isn't nearly as much of a history of recent oppression of the decedents of the anglo-saxons the way there is a very recent and on going issue of oppression of the indigenous Americans and Australians. So there isn't the issue of the excavations being yet another example of an empowered people overriding the wishes of a dis-empowered people. To put it another way, a large majority of the indigenous people of the Americas have expressed a wish that their ancestors not be excavated. And that wish has been ignored time and time again until recently (though it frequently still is ignored). Here, no clear majority of the descendants have expressed such a wish, there's no history of it being overridden or ignored, and the excavators (for the most part) are descendants.
    • mc32 4y ago
      True not recent. But the Angles and the Saxons had their lands taken away, their language subverted and were repressed by the Norsemen... So not "recent" but also not "ancient". Incidentally a group known as the "diggers" did seek some redress from their successors. In any event, bones are bones. I feel that after certain cut-off point, they become historical and are fair game for archeology. It's another story if it's an active or tended to graveyard --but if it's not known and is forgotten, then I think it's a fair archeological site.
      • Tagbert 4y ago
        And 600 years before the Norman invasion it was the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons invading and displacing the Britains.
        • mc32 4y ago
          Yep, and Cornish and Manx... So, you know, it's just human activity. Which is why I think bones are bones and they should be treated the same.
      • M2Ys4U 4y ago
        >So not "recent" but also not "ancient. Is the 11th century too recent to qualify as "ancient"? We're going back ~950 years here...
        • mc32 4y ago
          Medieval, I would say. "Ancient" to me ends more or less with the fall of Rome (Not Constantinople).
• Amezarak 4y ago
  Orders of magnitude more Native Americans assimilated into the colonial population than chose to live on reservations.