Burying Bones of Contention

By Natalie Angler

Tradition challenges research over rites for the dead

Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones

--From William Shakespeare's epitaph

Halfway around the globe from Shakespeare's grave, the normally conservative government of the Australian of Victoria has heeded the curse of the Bard, and by doing so has shocked the scientific establishment. Because of tightened state laws, the University of Melbourne must relinquish its important collection of several hundred human bones between 9,000 and 13,000 years old. They will go to the Victoria Museum, where a panel will decide whether the bones should be reinterred. The move was yet another victory for Australia's native people, the aborigines, who, in an effort to reclaim their cultural and spiritual heritage, have been waging a legal battle to recover the skulls and bones of their ancestors, locked away in laboratories and museums. In Tasmania recently, officials ordered the return of a state collection of ancient bones to the aborigines. And earlier this year, native Australians prevented two aboriginal skulls, each more than 10,000 years old, from being sent to an exhibit of human evolution at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Declares Lawyer Jim Berg, an aborigine who has been a leader of the campaign for native rights: "We don't dig up white people's cemeteries, so why should they be allowed to dig up ours?"

The aborigines' success gives new heart to American Indians, who for years have been pressing state governments to hand over ancestral bones and tribal artifacts, many of which are gathering dust in museum basements. "We believe you should not disturb the dead," says Sioux Indian Maria Pearson of Marne, Iowa, a leader of her tribe's efforts to reclaim bones. To date, Native Americans have had only limited success. In 1981 Yurok Indians in California persuaded the state to return seven ancestral skeletons, which were then reburied. Iowa and Minnesota have passed laws requiring that archaeologists consult with Native Americans before bones are removed from burial sites.

To scientists, putting the demands of native custom before those of scientific knowledge is a disturbing trend. Ancient bones often provide the sole link to prehistoric societies, giving evidence of diet, brain size, stature, disease and longevity. Should scientists be deprived of the right to study these precious fossils, says Anthropologist Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, "it would be an unparalleled tragedy." Studies of aboriginal bones are yielding some particularly important findings. Scientists had long assumed that the original Australians migrated to the continent from Indonesia about 10,000 years ago and, isolated from the influence of other societies, had been culturally trapped in the Stone Age. But recent studies of skeletons reveal the aborigines as a far more ancient people. There appears to be evidence from bone structure of two distinct migrations of modern man's predecessor, Homo erectus, to Australia some 40,000 years ago, one from Java and the other from China.

Such findings lead scientists to condemn reburial. Analytic techniques are continually being developed, strengthening or overhauling past interpretations. Explains Jane Buikstra, professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in Illinois: "In the past two years there have been different kinds of chemical analysis of bone development. We can now estimate dietary information in ways not thought possible ten years ago."

Many native people, such as aborigines and American Indians, are convinced that the scientific examination of ancient bones is desecration of the dead by white society, and thus a form of racism. Anthropologists, however, insist that there are no racial boundaries to their investigations. Declares Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University in Ohio: "The remains of many people have been researched, including those of John Paul Jones and Johann Sebastian Bach."

Scientists generally are seeking a compromise, as in the case of the Mary Rose, King Henry VIII's man-o'-war, sunk off Portsmouth in 1545 and drowning some 665 of the 700 on board. Nearly two years ago, the ship was raised from the ocean floor. Before that, many skeletons had been recovered from their watery grave. To answer misgivings about desecration of the dead, the remains of one member of the ship's company were given a symbolic burial in Portsmouth Cathedral last July. In time, all of the bones will be gathered at the Royal Naval Hospital, about a mile from where the ship sank, where they will be placed in a covered ossuary but will remain available for scientific investigations. Says Margaret Rule, research director of the Mary Rose Trust: "It's the best opportunity we've ever had to study a group from the 16th century. If we can learn something from them, that is good. I'm sure they would want that themselves."

--By Natalie Angler. Reported by John Dunn/Melbourne

With reporting by John Dunn