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Archaeological thefts --- Body snatching --- Grave robbing --- History

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Tombs --- Grave robbing --- Egypt --- Antiquities --- 15.51 Antiquity. --- Antiquities. --- Diefstal. --- Grabraub. --- Grafgiften. --- Grave robbing. --- Königsgrab. --- Oudheid. --- Strafverfahren. --- Tombeaux --- Tombes --- Tombs. --- Pillage --- Egypt. --- Egypte. --- Theben --- Égypte --- Antiquités. --- Horus (divinité égyptienne) --- Pillage de tombes --- Thèbes (ville ancienne) --- Antiquités

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From the early 19th century, bones became a sought-after raw material. Scientists had just discovered its usefulness in agriculture, while the burgeoning sugar industry used it to produce the bone charcoal needed to bleach its coveted product. The high demand that resulted from these technological advances had one major unexpected consequence: the plundering of cemeteries and battlefields. Now, two centuries later, this book brings together for the first time the grim details of the trade in and exploitation of human bones in several countries: Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Algeria and the United States. It shows that not only were the bones of those killed at Waterloo and on other late 18th and 19th century battlefields across Europe exploited, but that this little-known phenomenon also affected the human remains of wars both ancient and modern, including the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War. The fact that human bones, not only from battlefields but also from archaeological sites, cemeteries and other sources, were a highly traded industrial commodity was well known, and it was not until less than a century ago that it faded from public memory.

World history --- bone and bone components materials --- economische geschiedenis --- anno 1800-1999 --- Selling --- Human remains (Archaeology) --- Fertilizer industry --- Human skeleton --- Dead --- Grave robbing --- Bones --- History. --- Economic aspects

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Body snatching --- Frankenstein's monster (Fictitious character) --- Frankenstein, Victor (Fictitious character) --- Grave robbing --- Horror tales, English --- Human body in literature. --- Human dissection --- Medicine --- Monsters in literature. --- Murder --- Scientists in literature. --- History --- History and criticism. --- Frankenstein's monster (Fictitious character). --- Frankenstein, Victor (Fictitious character).

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Between 1700 and 1900, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were stereotyped, idealised, and held as a standard by which the present time could be measured. Various figures in politics, academia, and the church pointed to historical persons such as Henry VIII, Shakespeare, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell as icons whose lives, deaths and corpses illustrated the victories of English Protestantism,the values of Monarchism (or Republicanism), and the superiority of the English culture and its language. In particular, the subject of disinterment (exhumation) attracted the attention of antiquaries. They constructed a comprehensive memory of the past by 'reading' corpses as documents describing an idealised past. These 'texts' accompanied and enhanced the traditional texts of chronicle, literature, and epitaph.
This study explores the cooperation of ideology and aesthetic, the paradox of allure and revulsion, and the uncanny attraction to death. In each case there is a desire for the dead to speak in a contemporary voice; each historical personage becomes symbolic of larger aspects of the contemporary culture. The discourse of the noble body in death is reconfigured to validate English nationalist ideals and to establish the past as a Golden Era of unimpeachable superiority. It was not enough simply to study the lives and deaths of historical figures. It was necessary to disinter the corpses, engage physically with the dead, and experience the discourse of validation.

THEA TOMAINI is Associate Professor of English (Teaching) at the University of Southern California.

Antiquities --- Exhumation --- Grave robbing --- Nationalism and literature --- Political aspects --- History. --- Great Britain --- Grande-Bretagne --- History --- Political aspects. --- Historiography. --- Histoire --- Historiographie --- Funeral rites and ceremonies in literature. --- Archaeological specimens --- Artefacts (Antiquities) --- Artifacts (Antiquities) --- Specimens, Archaeological --- Material culture --- Archaeology --- Disinterment --- Autopsy --- Burial --- Literature and nationalism --- Literature --- Grave robbery --- Robbing graves --- Theft --- 1714-1901