Markup View

Author: ArcadesSabboth

Nov 24th 2012 at 9:05:15 AM

This shows up a ton in real life, of course. Often justified by "they aren't my ethnicity", "they aren't my religion", "they've been dead a long time", "I wanted a highway over this graveyard," or "ItBelongsInAMuseum". In the United States, doing this to ''Native American'' graves (as opposed to White peoples' graves) was legal and condoned until recently. The moral problems associated with it, and the objections of living descendants in some cultures, is a conundrum for archaeologists: if the field in a part of the world has traditionally gotten a lot of their information from grave goods (or in the case of Egypt, nearly everything known) then trying to honor the wishes of he dead can seem like a huge burden to those who aren't used to doing so. ''Not'' honoring the wishes of the dead (and the living descendants) can lead people to ask how archaeologists are different from grave robbers. It's a question that archaeologists in the U.S. are currently struggling with because of the recent passage of the laws making it illegal to take bodies and grave goods from Native American graves, and requiring repatriation of those already taken.

In fictionland you might see "it's an ArtifactOfDoom and/or can cause undeath, and must be destroyed/protected" as a justification.