We know from Herodotus and Plutarch that Spartan graves during the classical era were buried with a crimson cloak and olive branches, as well as those soldiers who died during conflict would have a gravestone with the inscription "In War". Surely it would be possible to identify and study the remains? Get more insight as to what their anatomical features were, what they ate and how they were buried. Maybe even get some front page worthy digitally rendered facial reconstruction. Surely there is interest in the ancient Lacedaemonians, so what is the reason for this lack of study/finds, lack of funds?
Lack of graves, mostly.
In a recent article on Spartan commemoration of the war dead, Polly Low notes that in this case, for once, archaeological evidence actually confirms the tradition we find in later sources.^1 Our evidence for Spartan burial practices is the Roman-era Greek author Plutarch, who wrote:
Lykourgos made most excellent regulations in the matter of their burials. To begin with, he did away with all superstitious terror by allowing them to bury their dead within the city, and to have memorials of them near the sacred places, thus making the youth familiar with such sights and accustomed to them, so that they were not confounded by them, and had no horror of death as polluting those who touched a corpse or walked among graves. In the second place, he permitted nothing to be buried with the dead; they simply covered the body with a scarlet robe and olive leaves when they laid it away.
To inscribe the name of the dead upon the tomb was not allowed, unless it were that of a man who had fallen in war, or that of a woman who had died in sacred office. He set apart only a short time for mourning, eleven days; on the twelfth, they were to sacrifice to Demeter and cease their sorrowing.
-- Plutarch, Life of Lykourgos 27.1-2 (he also gives a summary of this passage in Institutions of the Spartans 18 = Moralia 238d).
This text suggests that the way the Spartans treated their dead should have left practically no traces, and indeed there are few physical remains of Spartan burials, except for the growing collection of stones recording simply a name and the words en polemôi, "in war". Of these inscriptions, 24 examples have been found so far, scattered all across Lakonia.
The trouble with these stones is that they are not burial markers. There are no bodies under them. The Spartans tended to bury their battle-dead near the site of the battle, in mass graves that served the political purpose of advertising Spartan action in defence of its allies. The stones set up in Lakonia therefore by definition couldn't be graves (because only the relatives of those who had died in war were allowed to set up such stones). It's not clear what purpose they served, but most likely they were intended as places of memory for families that were denied the chance to bury their fallen relative. If we want to find the remains of Spartans, we have to look elsewhere.
As Lykourgos prescribed, the Classical Spartans buried their dead within the perimeter of their village cluster, and not in distinct cemeteries outside the walls, like the other Greeks did. Such cemeteries only start to appear at Sparta in the Roman period. This practice of scattered family graves makes it difficult to identify or study Spartan burials in significant numbers. Not very many have been found, and due to the lack of deposits in the graves, even fewer have been published.^2 The kind of data you're looking for generally require a good pool of comparable evidence, and this simply isn't available in Sparta for any period.
Problems with the burial patterns of the Spartans themselves are worsened for modern archaeologists by the fact that Sparta simply isn't a spectacular site. As Thucydides already predicted, those who study its ruins struggle to believe the great name of Sparta when they see how little is left of it. There are hardly any major public buildings, few precious objects, and little in the way of monumentalisation or dedication. The result is that there has been relatively little comprehensive excavation. To put it crudely, it's just not a sexy place to dig.
One of the more interesting finds of actual Spartan dead is not, therefore, in Sparta at all. As I said, the Spartans buried their war-dead abroad, and the finest example of such mass graves was actually found in Athens. A group of 13 Spartans lie buried in the Kerameikos, the cemetary outside the gates of Athens - casualties of the battle against the democratic insurgents led by Thrasyboulos in 403 BC. In his account of the battle, Xenophon records the names of two of the fallen Spartan officers, and these very names are inscribed on the outside of the mass grave. Of the 13 skeletons, one was found with a spearhead lodged in its ribcage, and another with two bronze arrowheads embedded in its leg.
As you can see from the picture, the skulls of these Spartans are somewhat collapsed, but might still be in good enough condition to allow for facial reconstruction. I don't know if this has ever been attempted, but I doubt it, for the simple reason that these Spartans are not prominent historical figures. The investment required for a proper reconstruction might have been made long ago if king Pausanias had been among the dead, but as it stands, these are just ordinary people, and only a small sample of the remains found in this large cemetery.
Polly Low, 'Commemorating the Spartan war-dead', in S. Hodkinson/A. Powell (eds.), Sparta & War (2006), 86
Stella Raftopoulou, 'New finds from Sparta', in British School at Athens Studies IV: Sparta and Lakonia (1998), 133
