ABSTRACT
Antarctica is unique in that the total history of human occupation of the continent is more or less known, and nearly all human burials there are of known persons. It is also unique in its administrative context, not being governed in the whole or in part by any single nation, but collegiately through an international agreement, the Antarctic Treaty. In this chapter I will focus on Antarctica as defined in the Antarctic Treaty – the area beneath 60 degrees south latitude. This encompasses the massive Antarctic continent and its nearby islands, which comprise an area considerably larger than the whole of Europe (14 million sq km compared with 10 million sq km). The various peri-Antarctic islands that litter the Southern Ocean north of 60 degrees south (Auckland, Bouvetoya, Campbell, Crozet, Gough, Heard and McDonald, Kerguelen, Macquarie, Prince Edward and Marion, South Georgia, and South Sandwich) are not dealt with here as they are all acknowledged as the territory of individual countries, whose domestic legal systems automatically apply to them. The chapter outlines the history of human occupation of Antarctica, the surprisingly limited
extent of human burials there, and the legal regime that would be applied in the case of the disturbance or removal of human remains.
