I was told years ago by a curator at the AK Museum that the bones were either resin or plaster and a couple of medical chums also put this thought forward. It may be, that with the passing of the years, the current staff aren't aware and/or haven't looked! Curious!

I do however find it utterly offensive that many Druids and Pagans wear antlers and furs ... as offensive as a fur coat and almost as debauched as displaying a dead child in a museum! That said the 'skeleton' at the AK Museum has always been treated with deep affection and indeed respect too ... I can't apply this logic to the cruel and senseless slaughter of animals.

Can I ask what this "degenerate dead religion" is of which you speak? Not Christianity surely? That still has some life in it.

Right, I've dobne a bit of digging (pardon the pun)

This is the web-page of the Order that seem to have organised the protest that deals with the protest itself:
http://www.xsense.co.uk/reburial/reburial.html

Their homepage:
http://www.druidswest.org/index.htm

Article from the Western Daily Press, Wednesday, January 31, 2007 (The CoBDO aspect is a bit disputed at the moment apparently):

"Druids Bid For Show Of Respect

With her head facing towards the rising sun, the four-year-old child is gently laid to rest on the edge of her tribe’s hilltop meeting place in the mists of the Neolithic Age.
But some 5,000 years later, Charlie’s skeleton was exhumed and [put] up on display in a glass cabinet as the star attraction at a West Country Museum.
Yesterday, leaders of the regions Druid community demanded that Charlie’s remains, along with thousands of similar human relics – should be re-laid to rest in their original graves. Members of the Council of British Druid Orders (COBDO) gathered outside the Alexander Keiller Museum at the World Heritage Site of Avebury where Charlie’s bones are on show.
There about fifteen druids in ritualistic attire performed a touching 40-minute ceremony calling for the soul of the child, refered to as a girl though no-one actually knows, to be set free.
The ceremony involved members of the Western Order of Druids (WOODs) forming a circle and chanting a hypnotic mantra. In flowing green robe, Denise Price, Lady Arch Druid, intoned that Charlie’s spirit was still with its mortal remains.
“Without decay the cycle of life is not complete,” she said.
She added that it was “a joyous but solemn occasion to release the spirit of this little one which we can see laying inside”.
Charlie was unearthed in the 1920s at Windmill Hill, a 21-acre site of three ditches which is the earliest man-made part of the Avebury stone circle complex, dating to about 3,700BC.
For almost 50 years, the tiny body – buried as though the child was being lovingly put to bed – has been viewed by countless thousands of visitors.
But many druids believe this was wrong and nine years ago Bath-based member Paul Davis wrote a paper calling for such bones to be re-buried.
He said it was disrespectful that the child’s remains should be treated as museum artefacts."

More news as we get it...

In other words, this 'degenerate dead religion' might be justified in asking for the replicas to be reburied in place of the originals - then again it might not; I'm not really sure to be honest, as I never did have much time for religion (other than as an interesting [but slightly degenerate] facet of the human condition :-)

Sorry, been a long day and a crouch is called for ;-)

Just for peoples information here are a few facts.

If the person in question with regards to wearing fur is Gordon.

He is a Wiccan, not a Druid. Also his fur is fake, and so is most of the fur that the people I know wear. His horns were donated by the forestry commision and are just shed antlers.

Also the members calling themselves COBDO who held this laughable protest are not COBDO, they are COBDO West and have been thrown out of the Druid community for causing trouble.

With regards to the slander flung towards the people who choose our particular lifestyle, please be aware of one thing.

Your posts have been logged and when we are fully recognised in the law as an established religion, we will be watching what people say.

LAWsuits will be issued under the religious discrimination act.

So enjoy it while you can, you don't want to continue after we are recognised. I would hate for a wonderful font of information, such as this site is, to be shut down cos some ex-avebury resident can't get over the fact that everyone in the village thinks he is a ***** **** ******. You know who you are.

At the end of the day Druidry as it was has no bearing on druidry as it is, and anyone knows our history as written by Caesar was propoganda to boost his standing against his rivals. So any word of how druids were by him can not be taken as fact.

End of.

Jim

Bardic Chair of Avebury