> Why are they excavating a pauper's graveyard? Others have commented on the graveyard issue, but the pauper issue is more interesting to me. Do you feel it i

> Why are they excavating a pauper's graveyard? Others have commented on the graveyard issue, but the pauper issue is more interesting to me. Do you feel it is more enlightening to investigate the tombs of the wealthy? Where records exist, they are more likely to be about the wealthy, not the poor, who were of course the bulk of the population, as now. The records we have for them are almost all archeological, for who would write about ordinary things? Sometimes there are baptismal or other church records, but not always, and other regions may not even have the local equivalent. And apart from simply adding to the corpus of historical record, we can learn things that might not be recorded about the rich: famines, levels of violence, climate issues, etc that might be recorded in the bones or other relics (fragments of wood, metal, etc). There’s lots of intellectual value to be gleaned from the remains of the “paupers”.