ABSTRACT

The United Kingdom has a rich and unique history of anthropology and antiquarian exhumation of the ancient dead (on its own territory, and throughout the former British Empire). A number of contributory factors need to be considered. Until the 20th century, the recovery of

human remains by archaeology or otherwise was chiefly the work of amateurs, even of dilettanti. There was a long history comprised chiefly of antiquarian curiosity, only partly relieved by the actions of nascent anthropologists (former anatomists, physicians and zoologists) whomade valuable contributions to human knowledge. Furthermore, the existence of Britain as the seat of an empire of worldwide influence gave its anthropologists a significant global focus. In law, initially, treatment of the ancient dead was the subject of Common Law but actual legislation was introduced not as a reaction to over-zealous archaeologists but to circumvent commercial grave robbing which, in the 19th century, was supplying medical schools with cadavers for dissection. In much the same way, the Human Tissue Act (2004) was introduced to prevent pathologists retaining body samples without consent, a practice apparent, for example, at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool. Here in the 21st century there have been notable changes in the law, some of which have not yet been fully worked through. Unlike certain other countries in Europe (France, Germany, Greece and so on) Britain lacked

significant hominin fossils for study and anatomical comparison. This was because the glacial advances of the Quaternary repeatedly scoured the British Isles and destroyed skeletal remains from earlier periods. Indeed it is significant that any notable fossil remains found subsequently have all been from the very south of the country, which had been least subject to the weight and movement of the ice: Barnfield Pit, Swanscombe, Kent (400,000 years BP) and Boxgrove Quarry, West Sussex (500,000 BP). Indeed, Britain’s ‘Missing Link’, the notorious find from Piltdown in East Sussex, was also from the south of the country. The enthusiastic and uncritical reception given to the Piltdown claim was explicable in that the British Empire could now boast of a potential ancestor to rival La Chapelle-aux-Saintes or Cro-Magnon in France and Steinheim or Mauer in Germany, say. Fortunately, and to their credit, some of Britain’s physical anthropologists were sceptical, rather than chauvinistic, and they made their names through their tenacity in devising scientific tests capable of demonstrating that this ‘fossil ancestor’ was a forgery (Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark 1895-1971; Kenneth Oakley 1911-81).