R"f .P"
Transcription
R"f .P"
R"f .P" A conundrumfor ArchaeotogÍsts andthe pubtic by W.L.Roth,¡'e est in Peace- isnt that what most of us wish for at the end of the road? At archaeologist, I have disturbedthe restof a few long-deceased T individuals' Such activitieshavealwaysbeenpart of rny profession,but üe exhu- mation of mortal remains, and their analysisand public display, raisesserious questions for archaeorogistsand the pubric to ponder. .result of such ponderings by Native,A.merica¡rs.archaeologisa, and others is the Nadve American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Under the law, passed by Congress nearly a decade ago, ürtually all docr mented Naüve Ame¡ican burials ex* vated in the U.S. and stored in muse. uns are being retumed to their own peoples for reburial. But what of the remairs of non_ Naüve Americarrs?Many of them find neither rest nor peace. ResUngin peace is not a unive¡sal cuF tural vahre. Many peoples, especíally in Oceania, use pieces of dead relatives as. body decoration or as relics in ancestor cults. Cultural anthopologist Bronislaw Malinowski once published a photo of a Tiobriand ]slancl woman rvearing the mandible of her deceased husband as part of a necklace. But most Europears and Alnericansdo not retishthe thought or postmortem meanderings. Perhaps the most famous on-theroacl crypt tale of recent tintes involves Argentinas Eva Perón, who was immortalized in the Broadway musical and film Er,t¡a.As author Edwin Mur_ phy wrote, 'In Argentina, political colpses are political capital.' The day afte¡ she died, on Juty 20, 1g52. Evita went on public r.,iew for a fortnight at the Ministry of [^abor, where two mil_ lion moumers filed past her glass_ toppecl coflin. Husband Juan perón, president of fugentina, plannecl to exhibit her body inside a ükenesslarg_ er than the Statue ofLiberry. But Juan was overthrorvn by u .oup in 1955, and the nerv president, Gen_ eral Pedro Eugenio ,Aramburu, found Evita still in the Ministry, where Dr. Pedro A¡a had spent ntore than a Vear injecting chemicals, bathing the úod,v in acelate and potassium nitrate, and applying coats of plasüc. The result rvas so impressive that ,A¡arnbu¡u cut off a fnger to deterrnine whether Ev-ita had even been a living t¡unnn. Then cane fwo years of corpse car_ ancl-nlouse in Buenos Aires as A¡arn_ buru tried to keep the cadaver frc¡n¡ Evita's supporters (his enenies). In 1957,as part ofan elaborareruse.sev,_ eral coffins lvefe sent to d.genüne embassiesar.ounclthe r,vorld. The one holcling Evita was buried under another name in a centetery in lVfihn, Italy. In 1970, A¡amburu was kid_ napped and executed. The kidnappers held his body for ransom: specifically, the corpse of Evita. Sh" *r, ,oon retumed to Perón at his exile estate in Madrid. EyervitnessessayJuan and his third wife, Isabel, put Evita on disolav in their dining room. Perón retumed to po,,verin,A¡eentina in 1973,brrt left Evira in Spain.\\hen he died the following y€ár, the guerillas who had origirnlly killed Aramburu, rekidnapped his corpse, offering t.o exchange it for their female idol. In 1976, Eüta came tstle to a bomb. and hqglarproof steel va:lt 20 feet below her fanrilyl rnarsoleum in Bue_nosAires' fashiornble RecrrletaCemererv. Juan Perón ur¿s br¡ried li a crypt with round-the-clock guards. Nonetheless, his ceremonial sword and both his hands were stolen i¡r l gg7. Ah. life in the fast lane of the deacl. But it is notjr¡st the rich and fa¡now who dont rest in peace. A dramatic element of Mary Sheltey's lglg novel frankerrfeinlvas the üeft of bodies from cemeteries. This was not a figment of r\4s. Shelteys imagination. In the late-eighteenth-century, newl-'l' established medical s.hoois faced a shortage of bodies lbr medical dissection ;ind research. Thev solvecl the strortage by payng for cadave¡s. led to grave robbing. Jvhj*¡romnttV In 1788, after children peered into the of üe Hospital of the City of ):,.r"p New York and saw fresh corpses under the scalpel, one of thei¡ parents dis_ covered that his wife's grave had been emptied. A mob of 5.000 stonnect the hospital. A three.da¡r riot was dis_ persed only when police fired muskets inro tlte crowd. A l7g9 hw in Nerv York and sirnjlar laws in Errrope allowed docto¡s to obtain the bodies of executed oiminals. But even that was not enough- The peace of the grave was far frorn secure. In the 1970s,two books Jessica Mitfor¿'s Tl¡e Amer¡canWay of Dath (recently republished) ancl Marearer Harmeri The High C*t of Oyng _ concluded that cremaüon was the best rvay to give the dead their serene due. But even this dignified solution Gra¡e robbers heeze in panic when a corpse cornes ali\re ¡n the 1943 movie, Frartc''6ei' Me6's tl1r'lllhtfman, st arritg Lon Chaneylr.r the corpse. foolproof. In June lgg7, AUen ]11 Meir¿, a pilot lvho macle a liüng b¡r promising that he would spread the -cremains' of clients over the Califor_ nia coast, killed himself. police found 2,000 boxes of cremains, some leak_ ing ashes" in a warehouse used by Meira. At his airpot hangaq investi_ gators found tlre ashes of another 1,500 people. Beside V¡eira's Uoa;l,, lvas a note that said he was sorn. The modem idea of cemeteies is botnd up lüth the concept of "perpet_ ual care-"hrt to an archaeologist. per_ petual'b a verl'long time and guaran_ teeing anything bevond 50 -vearsseems iffy at best, especially when burial remairrsstand in üe r¡¡av of proqr.ess. Consider tfre Wasni.,gron park I Cemetery in St. Louis, the semifinal resting place for the rnoftal remains of sonre 25,000 African-Americans going back to the 1920s.Interstate70 rolled through the center of the cemetery i¡r the rnid-'S0s, then rhe owner went bankrupt, and the cemetery fell into disrepair. \lVhen Metro Link, a $350 nrilhon light-rail svstem. \ ranted to hook up with the Lambert St. Louis Intemational Airport in 1993, guess what stood in its oaü. The City of St. Louis provicled iunds for new cemetery plots and even grief counselors. but onl¡z 40 percent of the interred rvere claimed. About 2,500 remains from the graveyard's north side were reiocated, but on the south side of the cemeterv, still pri_ vately owned, the bones molder under the rveeds. This is a typical fate of oldel gr aveyards in the United States. Indiana is a prirne example. "All over the state," wlote Associated Press writer. Ted Anthony, "üny pioneer grave¡rards sit in üe path of the very progress so coveted by the people who rest in them." Betrveen 1900 and lgg2. Indiana lost 28 perceni of its farmland. and that usuail¡r meant discarding, reinterring, or just paving over the land's permanent residents. Ther'e is an altemative. At the Avondale Mall in Decatur., Georgia, for example, a small building in the parking lot protects tiny Cror,vley Cemetery. But how manlz' oüer pioneer graveyards have simply been bulldozed into oblMon? Graves that are not threatened by progress nay fall prey to monelr Los Angeles' Holiywood MentoriaL Park Cemetery is home to the rernnantsof 80,000 depaned souts, including 400 celebrities the likes of Rudoloh Valentino, Jal'ne Mansfield, Cecil B. DeMille, and Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd), whose epi'THAI'S taph leads, ALL FOLKS." AfterArgenüna'sbetovedEvaperonctied in 1*52,her body was paced on publ¡c displayin a glasscomnfor t\ ro weds. Tl ro m¡lt¡onmournersf¡ledpasr. In 1996. the owners of the therrrur down resting place defaulted ona$.2.7 million loan. A bank took over arri tried to sell the grave-vard. and the morfal remains rvitlfn it, as a poteniial tourist atracdon. No one even made the minimum bid of $500,000. Where is an a¡chaeoloAist when you need one? D WL Ra*r¡e.a SeniorEdirorof ,tirynft Amizn UivtwirE fudloed,og,r. is di¡mtor of üe Cartraee Pmject {d rac¡6 arthe Univesitv of Ar¿d;. iiliil#li:ifr.:r.!::i:r', iil.*f Afts ütcFucral: Thc Postl¡mousAdv¿ltu¡c ol Famou Corpsc\ Edwn Murphy. Citadel pres, i 995. Thc Politial Li¡'a of Dcad Bodjs Rcburial ud post_ wialitt Ch¿ngc,Katherine Verdery. Columbta Univeruity Press. lggg. Livit\g with thcDúd in rhcMiddlc AeB. patrick J_ Geary. Cornell Univesity Press. 19g5.