I am currently in the process of writing my very first will. I've gotten to the point in my life where I have assets that would need to be dealt with should I meet an early end and want to make sure its taken care of. Part of that process is detailing what I would want my funeral/burial to look like. I've been pondering this for some time and with this weeks theme figured I might as well ask:
I want my grave site to be basically a time capsule. I want my remains and the things with me to be useful to archeologists in the future. What kinds of things should I ask my heirs to include? For texts/information, what format should it be on (some kind of archival paper/plastic)? How should my remains be prepared?
Things I considered:
My full medical records, including cause of death
Copies of my text messages/emails etc (Basically the 'letters' of our digital age)
A family tree
Some photos, probably of my family, our house, maybe some places common to my life
Favorite recipes/foods
Synopsis of world/national/local events through my life.
Details of my job, maybe including texts related to it?
I looked through the rules and didn't find anything prohibiting a question like this, but also nothing allowing it.
Edited for formatting
An explanation of why the items included with you were included, and whether the decision was made by you or the people who buried you.
One of the biggest problems we archaeologists have in terms of burial / grave goods is that we often don't know why they're there. In the 1970s, mortuary archaeologists liked to use grave goods as a standard metric for a person's status. The more stuff-- and the more variation in stuff, and the more exotic the materials from which that stuff was made-- a person was buried with, the more important / higher status they were.
This seems fairly common sense, but it ignores some important factors. First, burial traditions vary greatly, and in many societies, grave goods are not a thing. More to the point, funerals are at least in part for the living, not just the dead or the supernatural world. We don't know whether the inclusions in graves were placed there as a signal of the deceased individual's status, or as a means of conspicuous consumption by the family burying the dead family member. It is conceivable-- much in the same way that people often go into deep debt for weddings, or even funerals-- that grave inclusions have less to do with the economic means or status / rank of the dead person or his / her family, and more about how that family wants to portray themselves to the members of the community who attend the funeral.
Since we don't have records from most ancient societies of why these things were left in graves / with the dead, we have to infer based on other factors.
So... if you want to be helpful to future archaeologists, do two things.
Enclose whatever you bury in a sealed, air- and water-tight container. Bodies turn into goo.
Include a list, on acid-free paper or etched on something like aluminum, of what was inserted into the grave and why / on whose instruction it was inserted.