New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher

be quite protracted in others. For ex-

ample, in Sierra Leone you go from

being a corpse to a skeleton in five to

seven days – and that’s if you’re on the

surface. If you’re a body that has been

buried in the highlands of Scotland,

and you’re buried six feet down, then

those whole processes will take much,

much longer to occur. Although there

is a pattern of decomposition, the

temporal spacing of it is very in-

fluenced by a huge number of fac-

tors, so we can’t say that you will

get to a skeleton in seven days in

Scotland when we know that you

will in Sierra Leone. And when

you get to a skeleton, of course

that’s only a part of the process

because the skeleton itself will

start to break down. And we know

that we will have skeletons that are in

beautiful preservation that date from

Roman times and before, and we also

know that we will have bodies in a

cemetery in the UK where in fact there

is no skeletal remains left after five or

ten years because the soil is so acidic

that effectively the bones leach away.

There is a process, but we don’t have

specific timings for that process be-

cause it will vary enormously in terms

of a whole variety of factors.

As a forensic anthropologist, it’s prob-

able that ethical quandaries would arise as

a result of your work, most likely when it

comes to the family of the person who has

died. What are some of the ethical issues

you have faced over the course of the years,

and how did you overcome these issues?

Often our work is either mortu-

ary-based or it is scene-of-crime-

based, so it’s very well-orchestrated

and very well-contained. Where

you tend to find the challenges to

that come when you are working in

an overseas environment,or you are

workinginanenvironmentthatis not

governedbytherulesandregulations

thatyouparticularlydealwithat home.

Forexample,whenwewereworkingin

Kosovo,wewererequestedbythesur-

vivor ofanincidenttohandbackthe

body bagsthatcontained atleastone

memberofeachoftheirfamily– and

it was 11 familymembersthathehad

lost.Youknowit wouldhavebeenvery

easytomeethisrequirementandsepa-

ratethematerialinto 11 bodybagsand

givethembackbecausehewouldnever

have known the difference. Ethically

you’d never do that becauseit would

beimmoraltodothatforhissake– he

wantedreassurancethateachbodybag

wouldhave unquestionablya pieceof

that family member inthere,because

hewantedtoburythatbodybagwith

thatname– butalsothere’sa legalre -

striction thatsaysthatif the defence

lawyer says,OK, we’re going to ex-

humethatbodybagandif in thatbody

bagtherearepiecesofremainsthatare

not of an eight-year-old child then

you’renota reliableexpertwitnessand

we’regoingtobeabletodiscounteve-

rythingthatyou’veeverdone.Atthat

pointwhatyou’vedoneis thatyou’ve

impactedonjustice;you’venotserved

anybodywell.So,we’reveryconscious

ofwheretheethicsofwhatwedolie

andourresponsibilitiestoeachofthe

The other side of life

Our focus needs to

be on living. Death

will come, one way

or the other, that’s

the guarantee.

different players in that field. And

politically it can be very sensitive,

religiously it can be very sensitive, in

security terms it can be very sensitive,

and it is about ensuring that you have

a mature enough understanding of the

environment in which you’re working

to make sure that you miss these man-

traps, effectively.

You’ve had a unique experience

when it comes to facing death. For

those of us who aren’t faced with

death on a regular basis, except from

a safe distance in the form of news

and perhaps a funeral from time to

time, how do we reconcile our fear

of death and our view of her as a

menacing, destructive force? How

can we start to prepare ourselves for

death – our own and that of others?

It is really challenging. We have a

family friend who is in her 40s, and

she has not had experience with any

family deaths at all, and she’s actu-

ally terrified of what it’s going to be

like when that finally happens. The

best advice that was given to her, and

which she has followed, is that you

need to start talking about it. It’s not

as though anyone is going to ask you

to immerse yourself in a funeral home

or anything along those lines. We talk

about life, we talk about babies being

born, we talk about getting married,

and the expectation is that babies will

be born – we’re very happy to talk

about those sides of life. We need to

talk about the other side as well, we

need to talk about that preparation

for death. What is it that you want?

Our children all know what my

husband and I want when we die –

whether we get it or not is another

matter, but having that healthy discus-

sion about expectations, about fear, I