People of the past: Building a future for Scotland’s archaeological human remains 

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 430

Subscribe now for full access and no adverts

Around 2450 BC, a young woman migrated across the North Sea and travelled through the landscape we now call Scotland. Isotopes – chemical clues captured in her teeth – tell us that she had travelled from an area of geology very different to that of the Isle of Coll, in the Inner Hebrides, where she ended her days. When the woman died, she was buried there in a wood-lined grave, accompanied by a small, cord-impressed Beaker vessel consistent with styles found in the Lower Rhine valley in mainland Europe. Recent analysis of the woman’s genetic ancestry confirmed that she had Continental origins, suggesting that she was a first-generation migrant into Bronze Age Britain.

This intrepid individual lay undisturbed for thousands of years until her grave was excavated in 1976, close to modern Sorisdale, and her remains were moved to what was then known as the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (now National Museums Scotland). Her beaker was quickly recognised as a ‘foreign’ item, but it was suggested that it could have been an heirloom or passed along from somebody else. Thanks to more recent biomolecular analyses, however, we now have exceptional evidence of this woman’s long migration to reach an island off the west coast of Scotland more than 4,000 years ago. Research into her remains, now stored at the National Museums Collection Centre in north Edinburgh, has allowed the long-forgotten story of her life to be told once more – and it is just one of thousands of narratives to be revealed from Scotland’s archaeological human remains. 

Human remains, human stories  

Excavated human remains, like those from Sorisdale, provide an intimate connection with people who lived hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. Their bones and other tangible traces preserve a vast array of insights into their experiences – including diet, disease, migration, and kinship – as well as hinting at how communities dealt with death. The plethora of biomolecular and scientific techniques now available for studying people from the past, ranging from radiocarbon dating to analysis of ancient microbiomes and genetic ancestry, is still rapidly developing. Such analyses, taken in tandem with what assessments of an individual’s skeleton can tell us about their age, sex, health, and lifestyle, as well as archaeological insights into how people expressed their culture and identity, are revealing more information than ever before about biological and sociocultural change. The physical remains of the people who populate Scotland’s past preserve rich histories of identity formation, cultural contact, and religious change over millennia.  

While it can be easy to get carried away with the exciting potential of these scientific analyses, these advances also mean that research protocols and the ethical care, curation, and storage of human remains need to be more rigorous than ever. Human remains continue to be uncovered and excavated, either by chance or through professional investigations, but there is not always a clear trajectory for them to enter museum storage or be appropriately assessed for research (see below). This climate of discovery, research potential, and increased awareness of ethical standards poses various challenges for the heritage sector. Many museums and archaeological units have minimal storage capacity available for them to curate growing collections, and they often lack specialist staff with osteological knowledge. It is these challenges that sparked the development of Scotland’s Archaeological Human Remains Collection (SAHRC) project. 

What happens to human remains found in Scotland?  

In Scotland, all discoveries of human remains must be reported to the police, even if they are likely to be archaeological. Since the launch of the Scottish Heritage Crime Group in 2019, much has been done to upgrade and formalise the procedure for reporting such discoveries, ensuring that attending officers and those advising them understand the archaeological and ethical sensitivities of human remains and archaeological sites more generally. The procedure in place now ensures that, once remains are identified as human and not of interest to the police, a response is determined in most cases by the local authority archaeologist or – if the find has been made on a scheduled monument or a site in state care – by Historic Environment Scotland. The HES-led Human Remains and Emergency Excavations Call-Off Contract may be used  in circumstances where human remains are discovered unexpectedly, such as in areas of eroding coastline.