There was a story recently in the Guardian about Pagans demanding bones for reburial. It’s been covered by Afarensis, Dienekes, and PhDiva. There’s greater discussion of the issues at Aardvarchaeology and Cronaca. I’ve been waiting for the response from Pagan blogs before posting. Fortunately, Letter from Hardscrabble Creek, the Wild Hunt and Obbyoss. This last blog I found via The Stroppy Rabbit who has more links on the topic. I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to that site for a while and this post on the furore is perfect.
I agree with Martin as far as “I don’t think neo-paganism is any more silly than Christianity or Islam…” but I don’t think it’s always “really, really, really silly“. Sometimes I think it’s just mistaken or over-imaginative.
The element that disturbs me and gets the full three sillies is that the Council of British Druid Orders has appropriated my heritage and is telling me what I can or cannot do with my ancestors. I haven’t given them permission to speak for my ancestors. What gives them the right to seize and destroy the material evidence of my origins? This is a self-appointed elite which seeks to dominate the indigenous peoples of Britain for their own personal benefit. Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
The Council of British Druid Orders is welcome to make fools of themselves, but I’m competitive, and I’d like to think I have at least some experience in making a fool of myself too. It’s a shame because it diverts attention from what is a reasonable grievance.
Christian sites in the UK are treated differently to prehistoric sites. There is a strong case to question why this should be so. One argument is that there are Christians in this country and so their respects should be respected, while Paganism isn’t proper religion. The only other religious group who get this treatment are the Jedi. Both Jedi and Pagans were counted with the atheists in the last census. There is at least as much evidence for Pagan beliefs as there is for Christian beliefs. It is wrong this is not recognised.
A usually reliable complaint will be that Paganism is a new religion and fabricated. Religions are like wine, they get better with age. This I think is a fallacious argument. By this logic Judaism will always be superior to Christianity and indeed Greek Polytheism is currently 50% more true than Christianity. But it’s not an unbroken tradition.
Yet if you are a Pagan then you do believe your faith is connected to past faiths. The sites are in the same locations and presumably haunted by the same spirits if you believe. The human needs they fulfill are largely similar. Birth, sex and death remain human preoccupations. If you believe that the architecture shapes the spiritual landscape then you are participating in the same beliefs. If you accept faith as a reasonable argument this works. If you don’t and you think this is simply a poor attempt as rationalisation then congratulations, you’re an atheist. Now apply those same standards to Christianity.
Early Christian sites are not part of an unbroken tradition. Until the seventh and eighth centuries Christianity in Britain differed from Roman Christianity, not just in the correct shape of bald patches. This was changed again in 1533 and 1534 under the English Reformation and has been evolving into its modern state, which is a long way from witch-burning.
The Christians of modern Britain would be seen as heretics by earlier Christians and would have been put to death – as you have to do when you worship a loving and forgiving God. Yet the Christian burials have privileges. This is purely due to the self-identification of a current religious group with a subculture of their ancestors. If the majority of the nation followed a different religion then it would be those sites that were privileged even if the connection were equally flimsy.
I’m not convinced that archaeologists should prop up received wisdom or favour one group over another despite the lack of evidence. I think its a particularly bad idea to alienate people who are largely supportive of archaeological work and help conserve ancient sites if a compromise can be reached. This is why I particularly like Yvonne’s practical solution. As she comments on Remote Central, she favours the idea of ‘keeping places’ where access can be granted to archaeologists and others. That sounds like a workable compromise to me and it allows all Pagans access to the bones rather than an elite subset. It doesn’t allow for the destruction of the bones that some people want, but it does preserve them for the use of many people rather than a select few.
..and that’s the big puzzle. The demands made by the Council of British Druid Orders seems contrary to the inclusiveness usually found among pagans. Why advocate less co-operation and attempt to stir an unnecessary conflict?
I suspect this is more an attempt by the People’s Front to smack down the Popular Front. If you visit the council’s homepage right there at the front is: “In 1995/1996 three Orders resigned from CoBDO, unhappy, among other things, with its increasingly confrontational and political stance. However, this stance got results!” You can almost hear them yelling “Splitters!“. Co-operation can be a success and many Pagans have no trouble working with archaeologists. If you’re in a weak position then polarising the debate into them versus us is a good way to attempt to bolster your position. In this case the Council can portray itself as the defender of Druidry, and if that means sacrificing other people’s pasts that seems to be a price they’re willing to pay. The aim isn’t intelligent debate but to create an absence of intelligent debate.
Archaeologists and Pagans do not need to be in conflict. Many Pagans recognise the value of archaeology, and it also needs to be recognised that pagan contributions to ancient sites are valued. Personally as an atheist I find plenty of Pagan assertions unfounded, unnecessary and unreliable. I’ve no doubt that many Pagans can criticise what I do. Yet dialogue seems much more preferable than self-satisfied tribalism. I’ve said above it’s my heritage, but it’s certainly not exclusively my heritage. Accessibility for all the public, rather than a self-appointed elite – whether archaeologists or druids – would be good thing.
If you’re interested in contemporary paganism and archaeology there are some articles at the Sacred Sites project. Another related post worth reading is K. Kris Hirst’s Archaeology on the Wild Side.
