BONE IDOL

 I keep remembering the blood and bones, and my improbable start with my parents when the war zone was in England. No, that's a lie, I don't remember back that far. In fact, my memory starts from the point when I really realized I was a physical being. Breaking my finger bone didn't do. It was when I put an axe through somebody’s skull. I didn’t mean to do it; I mean I didn’t even see him.

 Is that an excuse in the face of the law? Any law.

There he was, laying in peace for the best part of a couple of thousand years, and along came this guy with a pickaxe. Oh sure, I'm not guilty of murder, you can't kill a man twice, and there was a good chance that the first time he died a natural death, anyway, whatever that means.

No one dies a natural death I'm told, it's always some form of neglect or abuse, the diet ruins the heart, abuse damages the lungs, and you can die of excess or lack. Still, he wasn't that old, as far as the experts could tell, but I didn’t got the full autopsy report because I wasn't in the family. Amazing what they can work out from teeth and bones but I never heard the details. They didn't tell me, and I don't know.

Roman England. It's hard to tell whether he was Roman or a local.

Again, if I could remember all the details of the burial ground and the period, and all those facts, then perhaps I could work it out, but I didn't even know it was a male, (they tell that by the hip bones).

There wasn't anyone around to discuss grave robbing with, in anything but a nervous and joking manner. Of course there were a few Christians about, even in the Sixties, but they didn't seem to worry, perhaps they assumed that he was a pagan,(or that early Christians were pretty dubious, too). Either way, I was just an unbaptised humanist, a life-long vegetarian with Pacifist and Buddhist tendencies, so I played the Sixth Form sceptic and hard man and I didn't offer any prayers or know any rituals, but I worried a little.

From deep down in my genes I felt a little unease about disturbing the peace of the dead... Since then, I have read about auras and force fields and telepathy and a whole lot of other stuff that threw doubts on one simple explanation.

The anthropology of all this is enough to disturb me, I mean which of the religions, or cultures or sciences got it right?  Any?  All?

If the country has its own spirit that doesn't change, how did it react? And if local cultural beliefs become true because so many people believing the same thing is a field, then which did I disturb, the Sixties or the Nineteen Sixties?

Any harm done?

I forget the details because those weren't the only bones I disturbed, and I helped stir up several sites - medieval, Roman, Bronze Age and Iron Age...there weren’t always bones, of course, but then who is to say that the spirit is only in the bones.

It dawned on me then, as I split the skull, that I had one too, and that it was going to outlive me by a long way. My teeth, however, seem to be making a good try at going before me.

I became aware of every bone in my body as I worked my way round that skeleton, with small brushes and tweezers, a knife and a lot of patience. It had to be cleaned and photographed where it was, before we could move it - ­oh yes, we moved it then, and we didn't leave a chalk outline either.

If I started thinking that I had to rescue every bone I touched or moved, from half-a-dozen museums, or their dumps, and give them a decent re-burial, then I would be embarked upon a lifelong and futile quest. With the luck I've had since, I would fail at every turn... unless it was meant to be.

Come to think of it, I feel like I've been launched on a futile quest anyway. Perhaps that is the curse. Oh well, maybe it's too much Indiana Jones.

Still, I am just the meat, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried being the thought of a body, and there's a few melting experiences that encourage the sensation of being more than just one genetic machine passing on a baton, but overall life is the same life as ever, and the illusion of time passing, or of progress, or of things changing, or of the reality of other periods of time but the one occupied by the body are simply simulations within that system, whether in words, or visual images, memory or imagination.

As the body grew from the single cell, it was ready for anything, but it wasn't warned about what to expect in detail. We're back to belief systems and experts again, as well as cultural assumptions. The vocal chords can adopt any language in their final formation stages; and using whichever language they do adapt to, a lot of other information can become stored in the hardware of the brain.... but where is that software of assumptions and beliefs, history, theory, myth and legend sustained? No longer just within the on-going units or beings, but also in a trail of stones that outlive all but the bones.

What do I know, what will I know, and what may I pass on or leave behind? This paper isn't going to last long. How about you?

If you are scanning these pages, then you are in this world, too, for a time, and perhaps you don't find it eerie. This is a letter from a ghost in a machine. Or perhaps it's just a mammal at a typewriter, who knows?

Are all my doubts too late?

Does Archaeology really justify grave robbing? And is its possible effect on me no stronger than my believing makes it?

Toby brooding about his earlier years in archaeology, in 1983 (unedited fragment).