When Archaeologists discover human remains in a dig (whether directly looking for them or not), do they first call in local law enforcement to acertain that this is not a victim of a recent crime? I suppose at times it would be patently obvious on its face that it is not, but do they or don’t they rule modern foul play out first.
There are plenty of laws and restrictions around the excavation of human remains (well, certainly in the UK).
If human remains are expected, a license from the Home Office is required before starting, and an archeologist would be expected to engage an anthropologist who could make the determination of the source and age of the bones at every stage. If something does not fit the context (soil, etc) then an alert would be raised.
If human remains are discovered when they are not expected, work has to stop until the site is evaluated and an appropriate license granted - I expect this process requires police evaluation to ensure that the remains are historical and not recent.
Si
Just as an additional data point…
Our church had to move some graves (all over 70 years old) in the churchyard for a proposed new site development. All the permissions were sought and obtained, and all was going well (a specialist service was engaged to do the work, and the site was fully screened), when a number of remains were found outside of the known graves. This introduced several days delay into the process - it was obvious that these were certainly previously moved remains from earlier works, but protocols had to be followed and appropriate checks needed to be carried out. It added additional cost to the process, too.
Si
What **si_blakely **said! I can’t find the episode now but this situation - bones being found when not expected - has come up on at least one episode of Channel 4’s Time Team causing much consternation when they only have three days to complete the dig.
Obviously the rules vary across the world and if you really want to know, you need *The Routledge Handbook of Archaeological Human Remains and Legislation*which goes through it all country by country.
I think this is important to emphasise. A lot of archeology is analyzing variations in soil, indicating structures that have rotted away or just what bits of soil belong to a certain time, allowing the discovery of something as difficult to imagine discoverable as a dirt track that’s since been covered in dirt.
This means they’re very good at deterimining if the soil’s been disturbed by later activity, and when that later activity was.
So, you mean to say that the Archeologists themselves will be able to make a good guess if this is a recent burial, meaning potential murder victim?
Well, they would identify the soil disturbance first (which is basic archeology), well before finding the remains (unless they have geophys evidence). They would be looking at evidence that dates the disturbance (recent vs historical), so would have a pretty good idea of the age of any remains if they found some. So they would be prepared and ready to contact the appropriate authorities.
Si