‘Stunning’ Anglo-Saxon burial site found along HS2 route | Hacker News Reader

‘Stunning’ Anglo-Saxon burial site found along HS2 route

theguardian.com

74 pointssamizdis85 comments

If you're interested in this, then you might be interested in "The Dig", a recent dramatisation of the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial treasures at Sutton Hoo.

In addition to the discovery of the treasures themselves, the real-life story of the finders, Edith Pretty and Basil Brown, is also of interest.

Wasn't it somewhat twisted around in the movie? I'm almost certain I read something about it being an inaccurate depiction of the events. Though I admit I enjoyed the film, nice trifle to put on for an evening in.

Seems fairly accurate besides the romantic storylines Hollywood adds: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/the-dig/

The final paragraph:

"Objects that have been unearthed will be preserved and many will eventually be displayed in museums. But larger finds will be bulldozed to make way for the new rail line."

So much destruction and expense for what increasingly seems like a vanity project.

> So much destruction

i don't want to be too philosophical about this, but:

i love history and it's lessons, but at the same time i prefer the future.

we tend to cling to the past, historical lessons, historical figures, but this usually hides our own insecurity about the future. i think there is a lot less to be learned from our past that can improve our future than many people believe. but we continue digging up our past, hoping to learn more about ancestors, when in fact we simply don't know the future, and this scares us.

> what increasingly seems like a vanity project

"climate change", "people working from home", "less cars", etc etc

> "climate change", "people working from home", "less cars", etc etc

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-will-never-be-carbon-...

It doesn't look as if HS2 will help towards climate change, even in the long run...

Not sure if the linked articles covers it due to the paywall, but according this article [1], the estimate that carbon emissions to build it would exceed emissions is possibly overly pessimistic. Such as predicting that air and car travel will get cheaper over time and rail travel more expensive

Although if the estimate is accurate I would still hazard a guess that it could be a net positive if it successfully increased capacity/speed to the point where people considered it a viable alternative to air/car journies and it was combined with policies to reduce the costs of rail travel/discourage air and car travel where possible

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/02/will-hs2-rea...

I wonder if studies are systematically underestimating modal shift because it's impossible to quantify the cultural shift from a generation that saw car travel as a sign of upward mobility to a generation that sees unnecessary car travel as tasteless and harmful.

It's not a vanity project though.

It's to take load of the existing train lines to enable better (more frequent, faster) local services with longer distance services bypassing these lines.

Yes, one hundred thousand times this! The national government desperately want to cut bits of it to save money, so there's a concerted effort to paint it as an unnecessary boondoggle, and a lot of people are buying that. And they always say "why don’t we focus on increasing capacity on the existing lines?" - which is insane because HS2 is doing precisely that.

Or it would if they didn't keep cutting bits from it (cough)golborne spur(cough)

On the Golborne Link, I think they had a fair bit of help from the NIMBYs too

Very helpful too that one of the NIMBYs is a local MP who happened to be overseeing the no-confidence vote in Boris.

(I wrote the grandparent "vanity project" comment)

I do understand that hs2 is about adding capacity, not speed. And I agree that we need more non-car and non-aviation capacity.

What i disagree with is provisioning that capacity in the form of a single railway line that goes nowhere near almost all of the country.

I described it as a vanity project because politicians (particularly the current pm) like being associated with big, impressive, expensive infrastructure developments. An alternative world in which we spent the hs2 budget on improving the capacity and throughput of existing rail lines and rolling stock could deliver similar objectives while benefitting more of the country. And by being more distributed, it would be more fault tolerant. But it probably wouldn't create photo ops for politicians in hiviz jackets, or translate into votes.

And i hate the landscape and habitat destruction inherent in building hs2. Too much damage has been done already.

My taxes help pay for this thing. I dont think my scepticism and disgust is uninformed.

> I do understand that hs2 is about adding capacity, not speed

Great! Glad we're on the same page!

> An alternative world in which we spent the hs2 budget on improving the capacity and throughput of existing rail lines

Ok we are clearly not on the same page.

> Ok we are clearly not on the same page.

I haven't lived there for three decades, but I grew up in Hull. Nobody in Hull is talking about HS2: it's as irrelevant to them as Crossrail. Even if HS2 ever makes it as far as Manchester, its still a two+ hour drive to get the the nearest HS2 interchange - or slightly less on a diesel train via Leeds. (And it probably will still be a diesel in 2035-40.)

And HS2 is similarly irrelevant if you live in Norwich or Exeter or Carlisle or Newcastle. Or pretty much everywhere.

HS2 is an impressive bit of engineering that will be great for extending the commute capacity for London. It does little or nothing for the UK as a whole.

So much destruction and expense for what increasingly seems like a vanity project.

It's frustrating to hear this view being shared flippantly after such a long time. It's of course fine to have various views as to whether or not the project is worthwhile or not, but a blithe dismissal as a "vanity project" means you've not really seriously considered it.

I'd encourage you to read this article (from a few years ago now, but still applicable) which I think is a good summary as to the importance of the project generally. Even if you disagree, it will hopefully lead to more informed discussion: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hs2-logistic...

> it's frustrating to hear this view being shared flippantly after such a long time. It's of course fine to have various views as to whether or not the project is worthwhile or not, but a blithe dismissal as a "vanity project" means you've not really seriously considered it.

I wouldn't say it was blithe dismissal. See my later comment up-thread

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31770221

I live in a smallholding. When the Milford Haven gas transit pipeline was being layed just by the corner of my field they found a henge. Yep, a stone circle, or the remains of it burried right in my back garden, along with countless Beaker People artefacts. The archeologists came, measured and sampled, and the pipeline now runs right through the middle of it. (It did make a curve around a badger sett though).

This is a little but old island. Spit and you'll hit history which is pretty awesome but you've got to build for the folk who are living here now.

That really is awesome. How big is a smallholding?

I have several acres of trees in the states and there is almost nothing interesting out there. Some trash from hikers is the most I ever see.

As a reminder, the Japanese ministers who set up the bullet trains resigned in shame when the project overran, it was described in a similar way and generally derided, and is, of course, now a symbol of the nation and vital to the economy and general life for a lot of people there.

Infrastructure is expensive, hard, and takes a long time. It always will be, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I'll take what little infrastructure that isn't car-centric we can get.

How many years have to pass between respecting the burial sites of the dead and a scientific dig that unburies everything in the name of research?

Not judging just asking a philosophical question.

Some people are never buried in the name of research.

Well, HS2 is going to destroy the burial site anyway so it makes sense to investigate before that happens.

Why is it that we are allowed to unearth these remains, but when it comes to remains of e.g. native Americans, or Indigenous Australians or Canadians, there is a push to have them reburied? Seems like a double standard to me.

One important reason is that the archaeologists excavating this site are by-and-large the direct ethnic descendants (and cultural inheritors) of the Anglo-Saxons, which is likely not the case for excavations in North America.

What if the diggers are instead descendants of Celtic tribes, or Pictish or Jutes?

Well all of the various tribes merged together for the most part. Most people in the UK are probably descendants of multiple of those old tribes.

Another difference is that in the UK there isn't nearly as much of a history of recent oppression of the decedents of the anglo-saxons the way there is a very recent and on going issue of oppression of the indigenous Americans and Australians. So there isn't the issue of the excavations being yet another example of an empowered people overriding the wishes of a dis-empowered people.

To put it another way, a large majority of the indigenous people of the Americas have expressed a wish that their ancestors not be excavated. And that wish has been ignored time and time again until recently (though it frequently still is ignored).

Here, no clear majority of the descendants have expressed such a wish, there's no history of it being overridden or ignored, and the excavators (for the most part) are descendants.

True not recent. But the Angles and the Saxons had their lands taken away, their language subverted and were repressed by the Norsemen... So not "recent" but also not "ancient".

Incidentally a group known as the "diggers" did seek some redress from their successors.

In any event, bones are bones. I feel that after certain cut-off point, they become historical and are fair game for archeology. It's another story if it's an active or tended to graveyard --but if it's not known and is forgotten, then I think it's a fair archeological site.

And 600 years before the Norman invasion it was the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons invading and displacing the Britains.

Yep, and Cornish and Manx... So, you know, it's just human activity. Which is why I think bones are bones and they should be treated the same.

>So not "recent" but also not "ancient.

Is the 11th century too recent to qualify as "ancient"? We're going back ~950 years here...

Medieval, I would say. "Ancient" to me ends more or less with the fall of Rome (Not Constantinople).

Orders of magnitude more Native Americans assimilated into the colonial population than chose to live on reservations.

If memory serves, native American groups choose to do what they like with remains. NAGPRA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Graves_Protect... - covers how to handle remains and cultural artefacts in the US.

Well, technically it's a bunch of Anglo-Saxons digging up their ancestors' remains, so that's ok.

In the case of indigenous Americans/Canadians/Australians it's also a bunch of Anglo-Saxons digging up the remains, and that rubs some people the wrong way :-)

That's probably incorrect. Britain is a diverse place with historical cultures of Celts, Jutes, Picts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, plus an influx of recent immigrants from various countries.

Assuming that every archeologist is a descendant of Anglo-Saxon heritage is pretty funny.

Hence the smiley.

Genetic studies have shown that most people in England who aren't descended from recent immigrant populations have a large component of Anglo-Saxon ancestry because there's been so much mixing and internal migration over the centuries.

It's true that there have been many waves of immigration, but over time they mix so most of us can claim Anglo-Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, etc somewhere in the family tree.

The number of ancestors is exponential in the number of generations. Anyone whose ancestors lived in Britain at the time of those cultures will be descended from all of them.

One bone is no more sacred than another. So, from that PoV, I think archeology should come up with some guidelines as to how to treat human archeological sites evenly rather than having a mish-mash of different rules for different bones.

They have. Everyone is expected to follow something similar to the SAA guidelines:

* Treat human remains with respect

* Consult with descendent communities

* Follow the law

In the UK, the government usually combines #2 and #3 in one entity.

So in the UK, if they find a "Viking" burial site they have to consult with whom? Sweden or Denmark? And Roman, Rome does not exist, but I guess Italy is arguably the closest political entity, do they consult with Italy?

It seems they should just have some standard way to deal with this.

The "descendent community" is the UK government, which claims all the lands within its borders and a few sites outside. That bit can also be interpreted as applying to the local landowners as well.

But if Sweden or Italy cared, yes it might be a good idea to give them a call and let the interested parties sort it out between themselves.

Fair enough, though I don't think it would make much sense to involve indirect descendants of expired political entities.

During the excavations to build 30 St Mary Axe- better known as "the Gherkin"- in London, the grave of a young girl from Roman Londinium was found.

She was reburied with something approximating Roman funeral rites, and the new grave is marked with an inscription including the traditional Roman phrase "Dis Manibus" (To the Spirits of the Underworld) [0].

[0]https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tomb-of-the-unknown-lond...

Seems like a double standard to me.

The representatives of 'native' Anglo-Saxons currently living in the UK don't seem to be too bothered and aren't pushing for it in the same way as the representatives of other native peoples.

I just thought of a similar thing when reading the article. My question was more in the direction - will someone unearth my remains in a few hundred years? How many years does it have to pass for your bones to become something that might end up in a museum?

I guess a lot of people have the wish to be buried and left alone once they die. How do we deal with ethical questions regarding archeology? If you had an ancient burial site with clear writings on the entrance like "PLEASE DON'T UNEARTH US" :)), would that be honored?

That also makes me wonder - do you fellow hackers feel connected to your ancestors? Are generations that lived hundreds and thousands of years ago just fun stuff to look at when you visit a museum, or they're something more to you?

I'm getting off-topic now, but just like the vastness of the universe can make you feel small and insignificant, time may even be worse in that regards.

They quite often rebury remains from more recent burials in the UK (100-200 years ago), for instance if the land of an old cemetery is repurposed (there have actually been several examples of this on HS2 as well). I don't quite know what the criteria is, but I think if there is little scientific value in the find, they will tend to rebury it. What will happen is they exhume the graves, categorise everything, and then rebury the remains.

The namer of Australia was moved to build HS2. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/hs2-triggers-the-final-...

Yes, sometimes they’ll study a find then rebury it under protective layers of sand/gravel or a concrete cap. It can be due to the research being finished and the find is too delicate to lift.

These people are the ancestors of modern English people and in our culture we don't have particularly strong feelings about unearthing the remains of people who died beyond living memory. Other cultures do for a variety of religious or spiritual reasons.

>Dr Rachel Wood, the lead archaeologist for Fusion JV, the company that carried out the field work

Is common in the UK for archeological work to be done by companies? In my country it is done only by state institutions.

The UK (and to a lesser extent the US) have robust private archaeology industries. It's a pretty well accepted career path, but not the only one. Government and academic positions still exist (and are usually more sought-after).

Because the UK is small and congested and old, it has a lot of historical sites juxtaposed with modern development. Developers are required (by law or code or something not sure) to do archeological studies when developing, so they hire companies to do it for them.

How does archaeology work where you live? Do you have to pay the government to come and do it for you?

>How does archaeology work where you live? Do you have to pay the government to come and do it for you

I live in Romania. You do not have to pay.

The reason companies are not allowed to do archeological work is because all artifacts belongs to the state by law, and because there is no legal framework to allow companies to do it.

If you find something by accident in your yard or elsewhere, you have to give it.l and also report the location. After that some archeologists will come to verify if the place is an archeological site or not. If it is, depending on its importance, they can dig it up quick and discharge the site, or can stay for years and either expropriate you for a nice amount or offer you compensation for the time you couldn't use your property.

Also, it's illegal to treasure hunt or use metal detectors unless you are legally registered. If you find anything of value, you have to give it but you get a reward of 10% of the evaluation.

So sounds like the same as in the UK, but instead of the tax payer subsidising the development, the developer is expected to pay for the archaeological work since they're benefiting from the commercial development.

I don't know if you've got the funny idea that these commercial archaeology companies dig up the artefacts... and then own them? That's not the case. It's the same as for you in Romania, just the archeologists are a professional service, not civil servants.

Though I think the UK has slightly different rules on who owns antiquities (and of course they differ between the constituent countries of the UK).

In England, only certain items (essentially those which have a significant precious metal content, plus prehistoric metal items) are classified as Treasure and belong to the Crown. Other antiquities are by default the property of the landowner to dispose of as they see fit, though metal detectorists and others searching for antiquities usually have an agreement with the landowner about sharing the finds or the proceeds of sale.

For instance, the Crosby Garrett Helmet [0] was sold at auction to a private buyer based in the UK for over £2M, which was split between the finder and the landowner.

Scotland has a broader definition of treasure that would almost certainly have included the helmet. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosby_Garrett_Helmet

Hopefully their Minister of Culture won't order the artifacts be melted down into scrap, but who knows?

Was is promptly demolished to make way for the Tory partys' vanity project ?

It isn’t a tory vanity project, it’s a huge boost for our rail infrastructure which is unfortunately getting ever more weakened.

In fact, if it wasn’t for HS2 we likely wouldn’t have found it.

Serious question: at what point does grave robbing become archaeology?

I'll be irked if someone 1000 years from now unearths my carefully lain grave, inspects its contents, and picks apart my bones. The typical response is "you'll be dead, what do you care" but I think that's trivializing a lot of deeply held feelings.

Serious question: at what point does grave robbing become archaeology?

Serious answer: When you are doing it for research, have been given permission from the relevant local authorities and turn over everything you find to the relevant authorities rather than keeping it for yourself.

I suspect you’re in the minority. Most people would be thrilled if in 1000 years people were still talking them, even if it’s only because of the bling they were buried with.

Make sure that a note to that effect is placed in your grave.

"Piss off! I'm only resting."

"I'm pining for the fjords!"

I aint'd dead.

Well, technically that is what the various ancient greats tried to achieve: that graverobbers would be so terrified they'd skip that grave and the ones that persisted ended up being given the Indiana Jones treatment. Not that it mattered, eventually you run out of traps and there are always more grave robbers. So in the long run it all gets found and that's before nature has its way with the environment where your gravesite is located.

Personally, I'll go for cremation, the idea to continue to occupy a plot of land after I'm dead sounds pretty selfish.

How well did that work for ancient Egyptians? The future generations are bound to desecrate any grave eventually. They always have and always will.

Get buried in a pine wood box, you'll be gone in < 100 years. Plant a tree ontop and create something productive in your later years.

That seems to be the way to go. I used to want to be cremated but now that seems ridiculous given that I'd be ending my existence with yet another display of extravagant and pointless waste, so a pine box where I can return to the earth with the least amount of fuss is really appealing.

You're welcome to whatever opinion you have, but as an archaeologist cremation or not doesn't really change the amount of fuss given to the dead. I've excavated huge burial mounds with both. The cremated remains are usually a lot easier to deal with though.

I just meant from an environmental point of view, not a "digging me back up" angle.

This is my primary concern, I would rather sequester carbon as a tree than contribute it in particulate via cremation. Disclaimer, if my next tree self burns down that's on the tree and not me :)

Not to mention that you're depriving nature of any nutrients you are holding. You're jealously burning your wealth to ensure that no one else can have it.

There is a growing[1] movement of being buried covered in mushrooms, including the box you are in, to speed up the decomposition, and to leave as little impact on the land as possible.

I previously wanted to be cremated, but now being composted by fungi seems to be the right way to go.

[1] no pun intended.

For myself, as someone of no special significance, I hope to find some little out of the way burial site, and arrange to be buried with as much finery as I can afford at my allotted time, in the fond hope that some archaeologist will unearth the site 1000 years hence and assume that I was an important figure and those buried around me were my subjects :-)

The line is pretty blurry at times. Some universities have been terrible about meeting NAGPRA requirements to return human remains, for one thing. In the early 20th century, a Catalina Island newspaper described grave robbing as a fun day out for the family. On the other hand, plenty of rich dudes in the 1800's tried to give it more credibility even if they were doing much the same.

They're digging them up anyway for the train line, so the archaeology doesn't really cause any additional problem.

I don't think you have a right to claim some piece of land for eternity, at the expense of future people who want to use that space to live in (or for their infrastructure).

So if your grave can't just remain there, what's the alternative? Do you just want it destroyed without inspection?

Moved and interred in a more convenient location?

People forget where burial grounds are all the time and the first reminder is when a backhoe goes through a grave. Best case, they call an archaeologist to figure out if there are any more and to relocate what's left.

The body would still be claiming some piece of land for eternity; just somewhere else. This would still break my "no claim on land for eternity" requirement.

Perhaps this is semantics, but you're not placing a claim on a piece of land for eternity. You're placing a claim on any piece of land. And it's not for eternity. It's for so long as the land is not otherwise used or until geologic forces make it irrelevant.

Do you think everyone who ever died should have a claim over the land they're buried in for the rest of all time? That seems obviously not workable.

Don't get me started on conservation of old buildings.

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