My last blog post…hopefully ever. For the final one, I wanted to do an ‘in the news’ special. Exciting right…. Anyways I came across an article in the Times Colonist (March 15, 2013) about the discovery of thirteen bodies in London, thought to be Black Plague victims. The bodies were uncovered in the process of the giant rail-line they want to build across London (because apparently British people don’t own cars…or have busses). The remains were laid out in an orderly fashion suggesting a graveyard; also there was a record of it so that couldn't have a hard conclusion to arrive at, on the edge of a historic square. This tends to take my thoughts back to my last post about the ethics of such a thing as disturbing human remains. They obviously had some idea that there was a historic gravesite so couldn't they have moved their snazzy rail-line ten feet over? For some vague reason the answer is usually no. They are intending to excavate and do scientific analyses on the bodies in order to discover if they were indeed victims of the plague which decimated the city in the 14^th century, in addition to pretty much everywhere else. A lot of other neat things have been found in the construction of this major project and this seems to me to be the new way of archaeology. No more Indian Jones running around discovering new and exciting finds through adventure and intuition…now it’s a phone call from Joe Blow construction man who just dug up some stuff and you gotta get it out fast so he can get back to whatever construction workers do when they’re not standing in a circle smoking.

Which is a bit sad to me but I guess that’s progress, now that I think about it I’m not exactly sure what I though would happen when I got a job but it was a more romantic notion then the reality that’s for sure. But really it’s all pretty awesome so I’ll take what I can get, even if it is archaeology in the middle of a city… I don’t like cities though and I hope I never have to go to London. That being said this is a pretty cool find and if they can find out some information about the lives of these people and the context in which they died it would be a neat thing for the people of London with long family ties to the area. Seeing as they keep disturbing cool stuff underground incorporating that into the general theme of the rail-line might be an interesting idea. At least an information plaque or something I'm sure would be appreciated by the people of London and their tourists, and as I've said before public dissemination all the way!

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/world/construction-workers-find-burial-ground-in-london-that-may-contain-black-plague-victims-1.91711