Preliminary survey results: how do professionals in the UK view and approach working with disarticulated human remains

Abstract

Disarticulated human remains (DHR) are commonly found on archaeological sites within the UK, yet they are often overlooked as a valuable archaeological resource. A review of the literature shows that this is due to numerous factors, the main one being budgetary constraints, an issue which is reflective of broader issues within commercial archaeology. Competitive tendering has led to archaeological work often being selected based on the cheapest contract (Belford 2022). Additionally, negative historic attitudes towards DHR (Hamerow 2006), and a lack of clear guidance on how they should be assessed, have led to them being overlooked. The best guidance available discusses the issues that may be encountered when working with DHR but does not give recommendations for how methods should be utilised (McKinley and Smith 2017). This paper presents the results of a preliminary survey of professionals working with human remains in the UK, and their approaches towards DHR.