How many years need to pass before you can dig up skeletons?

[Real blank]

I remember a while ago being in a museum looking at skeletons. There were several with written explanations of what each person had died from. Two of them were a couple that had been buried together during the Iron Age.

Is there a certain amount of time that can pass where it’s ok to dig up the dead ?

 

[ataraxia]

I remember a while ago being in a museum looking at skeletons. There were several with written explanations of what each person had died from. Two of them were a couple that had been buried together during the Iron Age.

Is there a certain amount of time that can pass where it’s ok to dig up the dead ?

Depends on who is doing it. Police not too infrequently exhume bodies for autopsies all the time, if foul play starts getting suspected- from days after to years after. That should be OK, I would think.

 

[Real blank]

Depends on who is doing it. Police not too infrequently exhume bodies for autopsies all the time, if foul play starts getting suspected- from days after to years after. That should be OK, I would think.

I mean as an exhibition?

 

[ataraxia]

I mean as an exhibition?

Oh I see. I would think a good criterion is that all their immediate and even second order family members would have to be dead. Hits too close to home otherwise. So... maybe 100 years?

This guy below wasn't even a skeleton- his body was found mummified and still surprisingly well preserved, frozen in the Swiss Alps, and dated back to... 5000 years ago (dawn of the copper age)! Forensics found that his hand had multiple semi-fresh scars, as if he has been in a recent scuffle a few days before. They also found a stone arrowhead lodged in one shoulder, which had unfortunately hit a major artery- the proximate cause of death. He had some stone tools, but a copper ax on his belt- sort of the technological equivalent of the latest version of the iPhone of the time- suggesting he was probably someone very wealthy or higher ranking in society.

So in trying to recreate the crime, they are thinking he was probably in an altercation a few days before, somewhat injured in the scuffle, and was trying to escape through the mountain passes when his assailants caught up to him and finished him off with an arrow shot to the back, leaving him to die in the ice and snow. If only skeletons could talk. Stone age drama!

Ötzi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now I'm thinking most of his immediate descendants are dead by now, and so it's OK to display him in the museum.

 

[Peter]

I would imagine a few hundred years at least.

 

[eman623]

Counterintuitively, in the US, you may get in trouble if you dig up a skeleton from the pre-Columbian age.

That would be a native American and digging in an Indian burial site on federal or tribal lands is forbidden.

And if you try to sell any artifacts you may find, well that's a "go directly to jail" crime.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[X Factor]

After the statute of limitations runs.

 

[switt]

Oh I see. I would think a good criterion is that all their immediate and even second order family members would have to be dead. Hits too close to home otherwise. So... maybe 100 years?

This guy below wasn't even a skeleton- his body was found mummified and still surprisingly well preserved, frozen in the Swiss Alps, and dated back to... 5000 years ago (dawn of the copper age)! Forensics found that his hand had multiple semi-fresh scars, as if he has been in a recent scuffle a few days before. They also found a stone arrowhead lodged in one shoulder, which had unfortunately hit a major artery- the proximate cause of death. He had some stone tools, but a copper ax on his belt- sort of the technological equivalent of the latest version of the iPhone of the time- suggesting he was probably someone very wealthy or higher ranking in society.

So in trying to recreate the crime, they are thinking he was probably in an altercation a few days before, somewhat injured in the scuffle, and was trying to escape through the mountain passes when his assailants caught up to him and finished him off with an arrow shot to the back, leaving him to die in the ice and snow. If only skeletons could talk. Stone age drama!

Ötzi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now I'm thinking most of his immediate descendants are dead by now, and so it's OK to display him in the museum.

Ice Man

 

[Stealers Wheel]

Uh oh! I feel a song comin' on!

 

[soylentgreen]

I mean as an exhibition?

Just to be a bit more precise. Do you mean a public exhibition or like the private one I keep down in my cellar?

 

[Chock Full o Nuts]

Disturb with caution.

 

[NWRatCon]

How many years need to pass before you can dig up skeletons?​

At least one more, Miss Swan.

 

[post]

I remember a while ago being in a museum looking at skeletons. There were several with written explanations of what each person had died from. Two of them were a couple that had been buried together during the Iron Age.

Is there a certain amount of time that can pass where it’s ok to dig up the dead ?

Who is asking, and for what purpose?

Final resting place isn't always final in Germany

www.stripes.com

June 29, 2010



In the U.S., sanitation laws mandate waterproof containers encompassing burial caskets of bodies requiring embalming.
It is extremely unpredictable when corpses buried in this manner since the last half of the last century will decompose sufficiently to mere skeletal remains.
Lincoln's remains seemed intact after nearly 40 years when observed in 1902.