The discovery of human remains is one which triggers a special emotional response (see Boyle Reference Boyle, Downes and Pollard1999; Krmpotich, Fontein and Harries Reference Krmpotich, Fontein and Harries2010; Crouch Reference Crouch2015); at times it turns into a disturbing experience, and altogether it starts a process of both distancing from and connecting to these relics (Leighton Reference Leighton2010, 91). At first glance, human remains seem like the closest material encounter with past individuals that one can get – they are the literal remains of a once living being. Osteoarchaeologists seem to take for granted that through the study of such bones they can say something relevant about a past individual's identity, something about the nature of their being.

Since the early 1990s various voices have questioned these assumptions, claiming that the study and display of human remains are unethical, as they objectify the once living being. It appeared as if the transition from a living being to corpse all too easily absolved the researcher from any ethical responsibility towards that individual. This simple claim was, however, thrown into doubt in those cases where an indigenous community included their dead within their community and therefore within the bounds of their ethical responsibilities. Discussions thus began to focus on the issue of the ‘proper’ handling, study and display of human remains, ranging from issues concerning the repatriation and reburial of bodies obtained in an abusive manner by science (Sayer Reference Sayer2010; Fforde, Hubert and Turnbull Reference Fforde, Hubert and Turnbull2004; Jenkins Reference Jenkins2010), to questions of what constitutes a proper research and display setting (see the codes of practice of the professional associations dealing with remains – Cassman, Odegaard and Powell Reference Cassman, Odegaard and Powell2008).

I propose that we need another ontological understanding of these remains as part of an osteoarchaeological analysis, to move beyond the idea that dead matter simply represents the once living human being and to adapt our methods to a different understanding of what the material, emotional and spiritual transformation from life to death might mean. I claim that we need to rethink research questions and methods in order to address explicitly the link between our ontological assumptions of what the studied bones are, and our epistemological goals: what kind of evidence are we looking for and what kinds of relationship are we establishing with those earlier lives? In the end I propose that such a re-evaluation can contribute to a recovery of humanity as part of the academic discourse, which should be the key element in any ethical discussion. I consider that at the heart of the problem is where we, in our present time, choose to stand in relation to the past in our process of knowledge production – what I call the ethical implication of our process of engaging with the material and our emotional responses to that material. Therefore, by revealing and understanding these limits, we can imagine an osteoarchaeology that can provide a more meaningful way of engaging with alterity and the past.

Archaeology currently experiences what Robb and Harris (Reference Robb and Harris2013) have referred to as a crisis in contemporary understandings of the body, where the move between disciplines is a move between ontological premises and wider philosophical assumptions of what the body is. The relationship between the osteology and the archaeology of human remains is one of two different regimes of meaning that transpose the body from a natural-history to a humanities perspective, from the body-as-biological organism, analysed by osteologists, to the social being explored by funerary archaeologists. As Sofaer (Reference Sofaer2006) has noted, this creates a tension between two seemingly distinct models, the body as an embodied being and the body as a material thing. This tension also permeates ethical discussions of the ‘proper’ treatment of human remains in more ways than one: we claim ethical duties towards the former ‘owners’ of the bodies, the former embodied beings, but in practice we address them as material culture. In general, as reflected in the codes of practice or in ethically themed writings, most osteoarchaeological ethical provisions are framed in line with Geoffrey Scarre's position (Reference Scarre2003; Reference Scarre, Scarre and Scarre2006; see also Tarlow Reference Tarlow, Scarre and Scarre2006) that contemporary practices impact upon the dead as ‘past people’ and not as ‘the dead’. In other words, we owe a respectful treatment to the dead in virtue of their former wishes as living people (that of being laid at rest, for example). It is not very clear, nor is it often discussed, what a respectful treatment means, and how one can legitimately justify osteological study if one follows this path. However, I claim that it is precisely this ambiguity present in contemporary practice as to how one should read these bones that creates the ethical problem. One cannot address humanity by limiting it to the bounds of skin and bone; rather one should explore embodied identities (Hamilakis, Pluciennik and Tarlow Reference Hamilakis, Pluciennik and Tarlow2002; Joyce Reference Joyce2005; Rebay-Salisbury, Sorensen and Hughes Reference Rebay-Salisbury, Sorensen and Hughes2010; Hamilakis Reference Hamilakis2014). It is precisely the rupture created by death that we need to think about in order to address what Thomas Browne (Reference Browne and Wilkin1835, 56) referred to as ‘This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death’. Does death contribute to a change in those humans’ ontological status for us? In their current post-mortem status, after undergoing a number of taphonomic processes, are they simply signifiers of past individuals (dead matter which was once part of a biological organism), are they the signified beings (humanity residing in bones), or are there more complex processes at play? Should we even call them things? Are they bones or people? Is the reply to this question a valid enough argument to continue transforming them into scientific specimens or exhibits?

Osteoarchaeology applies a standard, universal framework for understanding that views human remains as material evidence; the way these procedures are devised means that they assume that it is a limitation of our methods that prevents us from unlocking the ‘mystery’ of the past. I claim that the issue of ethics should be considered precisely in relation to the regime of evidence in which we decode these human remains and ultimately to how we negotiate and interpret absence – what do we take these bones to stand for? Contrary to Geoffrey Scarre, and quoting Kieran Cashell (Reference Cashell2007, 346), I claim that ‘precisely understanding the continued presence of the dead absentee for the living “survivor”. . . constitutes the philosophical problem of death’. A lot of the earlier and current debates on ethics in osteoarchaeology have avoided engaging in a deeper intellectual discussion and critical reflection on the topic, as has been rightly pointed out by Karlsson (Reference Karlsson2013) and by Svestad (Reference Svestad2013): reburial can objectify and silence remains in the same way as any other practice.

In order to explore the view that practitioners (archaeologists and osteologists) take as the legitimate way of framing the relationship between past and present, with the dead standing for this past (Sayer Reference Sayer2010, 13) and the transformation of bones into scientific objects, I briefly explore a particularly controversial case study – the osteoarchaeological analysis of Bishop Vasile Aftenie's remains (PS Sa Mihai Frăţilă 2012). It is a case study that brings together two contrasting views on the nature of the bones, of their materiality in relation to absence/presence/past/present, and, depending on the way in which we choose to link these aspects, we take different views on the dead and on death in our endeavour. Aftenie's case is one in which osteoarchaeology met the cult of relics and the politics of memory. I should mention that even though the case study is similar to endeavours classified as forensic archaeology/anthropology, it is not my purpose to highlight the importance of such endeavours for the wider society. On the contrary, I intend to deconstruct the conviction that there is just one methodological reading of what the ‘evidence’ given by bones is, and that the results unquestionably contribute to bringing justice to the dead. My intention is to explore the relevance of the standpoint that osteoarchaeologists propose in regard to their understanding of a human being, and hence highlight how this clashes with the need for a more ‘humane’ osteoarchaeology.

Vasile Aftenie was killed during the Romanian Communist regime in 1950. In post-socialist Romania, archaeology and osteoarchaeology have been called upon on several occasions in the context of recovering and creating ‘meaningful memories’ (Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda Reference Kohl, Kozelsky and Ben-Yehuda2008) of contemporary individuals who have tragically died or disappeared during the Communist regime. Examples include the research of the Institute of Investigating the Crimes of Communism in Romania for finding political victims of the Communist regime (Muraru, Budeancă and Bumbeş Reference Muraru, Budeancă and Bumbeş2007; Petrov Reference Petrov2009a; Reference Petrov2009b; Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului în România 2006), or the exhumation of several bishops’ remains supervised by the Greek Catholic Church. The exhumation of Vasile Aftenie falls into this latter category, being part of a process of beatification led by the Greek Catholic Church. After the fall of Communism, society redefined itself in part by re-evaluating such existences, distancing itself from the past politics of forgetting (the forced silence on the created ruptures or absences during the Communist period). But what role did osteoarchaeology assume in this process and what did science choose to recall through the investigation of such a body? This brought together the perspective of the Church, which saw these bones not as signifying the past but as that ‘being’, and the biologically informed osteoarchaeological approach which saw them as objects and ‘evidence’.

Precisely because of these competing perspectives which met on the physical territory of the body, I view Aftenie's body as a lieu de mémoire, a space in which the past, its traces and memory meet. This concept, advanced by Piere Nora (Reference Nora1989), helps us in decoding the relationship between history and memory. Memory implies an affective relationship with the past, ‘life . . . open to the dialectics of remembrance and forgetting’ (ibid., 8), whereas history is a detached representation of something lost, looking at its object of interest from outside (ibid., 8–9). What the osteoarchaeological analysis did was to turn memory into history, to transform personal experiences into an archival exercise.

On 10 May 1950, Vasile Aftenie, a Greek Catholic bishop, died in the Văcărești prison. The limited information we have suggests that his death was caused by the beatings and torture he received in order to make him denounce his Greek Catholic faith (PS Sa Mihai Frăţilă 2012). Therefore, 60 years later, osteoarchaeology was called to fill in this void. Thus, to quote Verdery (Reference Verdery2000), ‘what put these bones into motion?’: ‘he was jovial, funny and popular. He was also invited to dine with the families of parishioners. The Securitate thought he would break easily, but he was the first one who died for his faith’ (Corlățan Reference Corlățan2010). Vasile Aftenie had studied theology at Blaj and Rome; he was ordained a priest on 1 January 1926 and became a bishop in April 1940 (Biografie PS Aftenie n.d.). On 28 October 1948, aged 49, Aftenie was arrested and taken, along with other five Greek Catholic bishops, at first to Dragoslavele and then to the Căldăruşani Orthodox monastery, which had been converted into a prison. He refused the mitropolite position offered by the Orthodox Church in exchange for denouncing his faith. In May 1949 he was transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he was tortured (Biografie PS Aftenie n.d.):

His body was buried in secret in Bellu Catholic cemetery in Bucharest in an unmarked grave. After a couple of days, Monseniore Augustin Francisc from Saint Iosif Cathedral brought a cross, on which was inscribed simply ‘V.A. 1950’ (Corlățan Reference Corlățan2010). Some 60 years later, on 12 May 2010, my colleague Andrei Soficaru and I arrived at the presumed grave of the bishop in Bellu cemetery to attend the exhumation of Aftenie's bones. The process was supervised by the Commission for the Recognition of the Bones of God's Servant Bishop Vasile Aftenie (Arhieparhia de Alba Iulia şi Făgăraş 2010). The process of beatification of Vasile Aftenie was part of a broader agenda of canonization inside the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, which included seven other bishops. This was an integrated attempt at recovering the Church's memory and identity post-1989. In the Communist era, the Church had been prohibited, its properties confiscated, and its priests imprisoned. In the post-1989 ‘retribution’ process, bodies become a means of establishing legitimacy and provided material evidence of the Church's persistence in space. The bodies both of parishioners and of the dead became actors – the bishops’ human remains are witness to the suffering endured by the representatives of the Church, the living embodiment of its history.

My colleague and I, as well as several archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology Vasile Parvan, had been called to take part in this action in order to analyse the unearthed bones, to decide if they belonged to the bishop, and to bring evidence regarding his violent death (which translated for the Church into signs of martyrdom). This latter aspect essentially was at the core of the beatification process – the ‘evidence of the bones’ would be added to the testimonies and information found in the CNSAS files. Our research spanned two days, and consisted of unearthing and analysing the remains. The exhumation was attended by about 30 people: the gravedigger who had dug the grave in 1950, the exhumation committee, other gravediggers, archaeologists, priests and parishioners (Arhieparhia de Alba Iulia şi Făgăraş 2010). As soon as the level of the first bones was reached, the archaeologists took charge of the process: ‘Poorly preserved . . . the bishop's remains were found at a 1.98–2.06 m depth, calculated from the superior margin of the border. The body had been placed in dorsal decubit position, with his head towards the west’ (Dragoman et al. Reference Dragoman, Oanţă-Marghitu, Palincaş and Vasilescu2012, 58). Besides the body, fragments of wood and nails from the coffin were also discovered, along with pieces of clothing. He was probably wearing his priest's garment, as a white collar and dark blue fragments from a pair of trousers were discovered (ibid., 62). Other materials discovered in the pit suggest that the grave had been an active place of worship and post-interment interventions: these included two buttons, construction debris, a candle fragment, a candle holder, Communist- and post-Communist-era coins, and a labelled glass vial with a lid containing hair (ibid., 69–70).

Once the bishop's remains were removed, they were placed in a box and stored until the following day, when the anthropological analysis took place. First, we washed the bones with water in the courtyard of the institution, left them to dry and then analysed them to determine sex, age, potential trauma marks or pathology. The results revealed that the remains of three individuals were represented, with the presumed bishop's remains labeled as ‘skeleton 3’ (Soficaru and Ion Reference Soficaru and Ion2012). The information that we had to confirm was that the skeleton belonged to a man, aged 51 years, who had been tortured. To this was added the hearsay that he had been buried in a shortened coffin, having his feet cut in the process. To test these accounts, the bones were examined by eye and through a magnifying glass, compared with reference materials, and measured. The results of the analysis suggested that the remains belong to a man with a minimum age of 45 years and an average calculated height of 180 cm, and showed signs of a slight osteoarthritis. Based on these data, and corroborated by the ‘V.A. 1950’ inscribed on the cross and the priest's apparel discovered in the grave, the interpretation that the skeleton belonged to Aftenie appeared feasible. At the same time, given that the femora and tibiae were placed at the same level and in the correct anatomical position (Soficaru and Ion Reference Soficaru and Ion2012), we could refute the belief that his legs had been cut. However, the lack of evidence for trauma on the bones themselves (‘no fractures, cuts or blow marks were registered’ – ibid., 37) prevented us from saying anything about the possible torture he might have suffered. It is worth noting that many torture methods would not have left marks on the bones, and their memory cannot be retrieved through such investigations (in contrast with this case, for example, in the parallel situation of Monseniore Vladimir Ghika, a Catholic priest who died in prison in 1954, the anthropologists could retrace the steps of the beatings he had received, as described in a talk presented at the Institute of Anthropology ‘Francisc I. Rainer’ by Andrei Soficaru and Mihai Constantinescu).

What can be seen is that the anthropological analysis turned into a process of identifying the person, an identification based on the correspondence between the story and the body. In this context, the body becomes archival material onto which age, sex, cause of death and material traces of suffering are inscribed. Osteoarchaeology acted as a legal forensic investigation, following a method of inquiry developed from a positivistic view of science (see also Domanska Reference Domanska2005, 396), one in which science was seen as evidence and not as interpretation (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1969). There is a history of viewing human remains as evidence since nineteenth-century court cases, and of decoding body signs as ‘tangible evidence of otherwise invisible processes and events’ (Crossland Reference Crossland2009, 71; other authors touching upon the semiotic perspective in osteoarchaeology include Domanska Reference Domanska2005; Joyce Reference Joyce2005; Marila Reference Marila2009; Sofaer Reference Sofaer2012). The model in Vasile Aftenie's case followed similar research into war crimes or the recovery of political victims’ bodies (Anson and Trimble Reference Anson, Trimble and Oxenham2008; Cox et al. Reference Cox, Flavel, Hanson, Laver and Wessling2008; González-Ruibal Reference González-Ruibal2012). In such instances, archaeology supports the idea that through the ‘correct’ identification and recording of discoveries, objects and bodies, it can provide evidence, reconstitute crime scenes and uncover victims’ and killers’ identities (Hanson Reference Hanson and Oxenham2008, 19–20). The key element is a body understood as corpus delicti (Buchli and Lucas Reference Buchli and Lucas2001, 121), and the endeavour is often subsumed to an indictment. Given this understanding of the role of osteoarchaeological interpretation, the bones were constituted as signs or clues, and the body as evidence, a witness questioned to put a face to an already known story. The premise is that although ‘reality may seem opaque, there are privileged areas, signs, clues, which permit us to penetrate it’ (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur2006, 123), a premise constructed in the semiotic paradigm (see also Ginzburg Reference Ginzburg1980). This is the reason why it was an investigation of the material traces (potential trauma marks), signs inscribed on the biological being. Ultimately their point is that signs are a substitute for the presence of the thing. An alternative might be what Ewa Domanska (Reference Domanska2005, 395) called archaeontology, the ‘gathering of existing things and the contemplation of their being with the aim of regaining the beginning’.

In this manner the individual was once again silenced. Ideally, an osteoarchaeological investigation in such a forensic context could serve as a good way of understanding and talking about the materiality of terror/violence and the way in which absences have been created by the Communist regime through the manipulation of bodies (cf. González-Ruibal and Moshenska 2015; Martin and Anderson 2014; Renshaw Reference Renshaw2010). Such an account would allow us to understand the politics of symbolic forgetting of the political enemies of the regime through a deeper understanding of a variety of issues: the ways that the victims’ living and dead bodies have been handled and disposed of, the ways in which certain bodies have been turned into a place of commemoration for the Greek Catholic believers (who left traces of their veneration at the grave), and the ways in which such bodies served as symbolic landmarks that signified their outlawed beliefs and the meaning of the life of ‘V.A.’. However, even if these were to be addressed, the problem still remains – how could osteoarchaeology have contributed to moving beyond an objectifying paradigm? The methods are limiting and raise ethical issues. One interesting point is raised by Bennett (2010, 12–13), who proposes that we raise the status of the materiality of which we are composed: ‘Each human is a heterogeneous compound of wonderfully vibrant, dangerously vibrant, matter. The ethical aim becomes to distribute value more generously, to bodies as such . . . and in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself’. This follows concepts derived from thinkers from Henri Bergson to Gilles Deleuze and it draws upon the philosophy of biology, and reorients thinking from passive matter towards ‘vibrant life’ (ibid.). Such an approach thus recuperates traditional questions in the philosophy of biology – how is life organized, the relationship between parts and wholes in understanding the dynamics of life – and in this case it can replace our current divisions between passive bodies and cultural understandings with bodies ‘that act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own’ (ibid., viii).

Furthermore, the osteoarchaeological endeavour focuses on the bones and records the static material as if the memory of a past identity resides in that material. It is true that the bishop's body acts as a lieu de mémoire: through its materiality, it makes manifest the past in the present. But different memories are brought into view depending on the ways in which this materiality is framed. What the osteoarchaeological process did, in the case of Aftenie, was to reduce the dynamic process of living and dying in a certain political and religious context to a static series of cause–effect relationships by constructing a divide between the three dimensions: bones–bodies–humanity. As the written accounts tell us, Aftenie was significant to others through the way he would direct his existence, in a lived body, whereas the scientific report understood the bones as passive objects, playing a functional role in the wider framework of the biological body represented by the skeleton. What gets lost in this interpretive process is the very humanity and performed identity of ‘V.A.’. This is also reflected in the fact that the methodology silences our own (authors of the analysis) engagement with Aftenie's memory and his remains. How can humanity be recognized and expressed in the context of the analysis if there is no procedure or language that would acknowledge it without seemingly losing what is deemed as scientific objectivity? The analysis limited itself to highlighting the signs inscribed on the bones, read objectively as traces of past agencies inscribed on the biological being. Thus what was recorded was the agency of the killers (trauma marks, or their absence): Aftenie's age became ‘age of death’ and his passions were turned into ‘cause of death’. Terms found in the osteoarchaeological report (‘perimortem trauma’, ‘possible causes of death’, etc.) are interpreted by the Church as evidence of martyrdom, integral to the view of the body as an agent, transformed through pain, and described through a language that encompasses the concept of personhood. For osteoarchaeology, on the other hand, ‘V.A.’ is a body described by the percentages and medical terms that limit themselves to an anatomical geography of a physical body. At the same time, other signs are simply enumerated – e.g. the taphonomic observation that the colour of the bones ranged from dark brown to black, as a result of the interwoven effect of the soil and the fabric of his trousers. However, this could have sparked a meditation on how Aftenie's identity (the priest's garment) sieved through his decomposing body (his bones), and merged with the burial environment. From this perspective we view an open body, placed at the confluence of dynamic processes in which life and death, identity and materiality, get enmeshed and co-constitute each other. In practice, the meaning of the remains moved from a body as ‘cover’ to embodied experience, from a body questioned as object of osteoarchaeological interest to a subject body (sacred relics) and the meaning of being embodied (Ciocan Reference Ciocan2013, 17).

This case study illustrates that through constructing its categories, osteoarchaeology can become an unethical endeavour due to its ontological assumptions about what the bones stand for and the way in which such a study addresses and also misses the issue of past humanities. But the challenge remains: can we imagine a different osteoarchaeology? The Vasile Aftenie case provides a good example where we see how the limits of scientific discourse are configured in a context where different models of knowledge production (based on material evidence) overlap or collide, due to different ontological perspectives on the human body. Such an encounter confronts our embedded belief that current methodology is the only way forward. There is no easy or straightforward answer at the moment because we have pushed death out of the contemporary discourse and our practice leaves no room for ambiguous or transgressing categories. The engagement with other ontological perspectives on human remains might open up our discipline, but my thought is that what we need is a radical, new way of understanding the materiality of the body.Footnote ¹

What can we ask of osteoarchaeologists? I would say that one way further is to open our discipline towards anthropology (see also the recent proposals gathered in Crossland and Joyce (Reference Crossland and Joyce2015)), a move that would lead to a different positioning towards the individuals we talk about. In the particular case of Vasile Aftenie the application of a universal and standard methodology, devised for any kind of body/tomb, did not leave room for an understanding of the particulars of his situation. Osteoarchaeologists failed to acknowledge precisely the view of the body as the deceased himself would have embraced it, as a member and a bishop of the Greek Catholic community. Thus I think that maybe we need to adopt an approach similar to that which Crispin Paine has applied to religious objects in museums and move beyond what can ultimately be read as a colonialist practice which ignores the significance that the community gives to their own material. And by this I do not simply suggest that we ‘talk respectfully’ about human remains (whatever that might mean), but that we move beyond an ‘objective’ and universal methodology and actively engage with the agency of these remains. What is ultimately at stake here is an exercise in sincerityFootnote ² – our approach to the Other (whether we talk about a prehistoric skeleton or a Second World War soldier) is grounded in a certain metaphysical stance, which is often unacknowledged under the pretense of ‘objectivity’. Therefore the first step would be to make explicit this stance and affirm what it is that we deem important when we engage with the dead. My own interest is to give back a voice to those who got lost in the midst of history, or to reflect on the way the agency of their remains has impacted on the living.