Is Orpheus being needlessly torn apart?

Aug 4, 2005 Alun Politics, The Past 2 Comments Ancient History, Archaeology, Bulgaria, Ethics, Prehistoric

Hill­side Med­it­a­tions has a thought pro­vok­ing post – Grave Rob­bers spurred on by TIME’s cov­er­age of the recent Thra­cian finds which may, or may not, have some­thing to do with Orph­eus. In a pas­sion­ate post Chris­tian Ren­ner states “I have always thought that arche­ology very often bor­ders dir­ectly to grave rob­bery and desec­ra­tion.” At this point I could be smug and pat­ron­ising. Archae­ology isn’t about find­ing things, it’s about find­ing things out. But then it would be obvi­ous that I hadn’t read the Independent.

The Inde­pend­ent’s cov­er­age of the Bul­garian finds.

He also asks:

“Is there a dif­fer­ence between Span­ish com­mun­ists tak­ing dead nuns out of their tombs and dan­cing with the decay­ing corpses and an arche­olo­gist unearth­ing lov­ingly bur­ied remains of ancient kings and put­ting them on dis­play for the dumb masses?”

You guess it: my answer is a clear “No!”

In light of the above does he have a point?
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