Bones

[poliphilo]

The Jewry Wall Museum has a lot of deaders on display- including a Saxon lady with all her gee-gaws and finery. Were the long bronze objects at her belt that look like Roman keys real keys to real locks or merely symbolic keys to symbolic locks?  Did the Saxons even have locks? And was the crystal knob with a hole bored through it a spindle weight- as the guy who reconstructed it thinks- or something completely different?

Another display draws attention to the truly awful condition of our ancestors' teeth.

Ailz and I had a debate about the ethics of displaying human remains. My view is this: if my children's children's children are interested in the old dry bones I've discarded and left behind and want to put them in a glass case I'm entirely happy for them to do so.

Comments

[algabal.livejournal.com]

I recently saw someone's MySpace profile that actually had about half a dozen pictures of their dead grandmother in her open casket! They were posted with solemn reverence...on MySpace.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never really got the open casket thing. We don't do it over here. We hide our dead away- and a good thing too!