Beryl, like death, is supposed to be permanent.

The process and tradition has a weight, a finality.

The very act of placing our dead in a hole in the ground and then covering them with

pound after pound of heavy damp soil, well it's one of the most powerful metaphors of everyday

life.

When we bury our dead, we bury the past.

We dig deep and place something precious, some one precious, out of reach from society.

In the vast majority of the time we do all of this is in graveyards, a place that is itself

viewed as sacred and set apart.

Beryl, for a huge portion of the world, is the end.

Graves, as eternal as they seem, are sometimes disturbed though.

Most of the time the buried are unburied by accident.

We assume this when we talk about ancient burial sites in places like Rome or London,

often as a result of modern construction projects and development of long abandoned property.

For example, the Gurkin in London stands on the site of the 1600-year-old grave of a

girl from the Roman era of the city.

The remains of King Richard III were found in 2012 beneath a parking lot in the city of

Lester.

And just a few years ago, a similar site was discovered beneath a portion of New York University.

Sometimes the dead are disturbed.

And sometimes it's on purpose.

And ancient times the goal was often grave robbing.

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