Within the framework of contractual archaeology in the UK (in which both authors largely operate) individual graves and funerary sites are regularly encountered, while they are also the object of targeted research projects. The ability to investigate a burial and to exhume human remains is a practical skill that can be taught and which may be mastered by practice. The investigation of a cemetery of any age is essentially a repetition of this basic technique, in which each grave (or indeed any feature-type containing human remains) is revealed, excavated, and the human remains recorded and lifted. Such exercises vary in scale, but the largest can address very significant numbers of bodies: one obvious example is the cemetery at Spitalfields, London, in which several thousand skeletons were exhumed. Post-excavation methods are also fairly standardized, both in terms of general archaeological reporting and the specific osteological analysis of human remains. These approaches can reasonably be said to be universal within European and North American archaeology, though inevitably with some variation in detail. As a consequence, field archaeologists are, in a technical sense, expert in dealing with the dead. Archaeologists, however, are often less familiar with the more esoteric aspects relating to the dead. Taking the British example again, the field archaeologist generally arrives at a site only after any discussion about the moral or social aspects of exhumation has been concluded. Thus, while provided with technical guidance and being aware of the wider issues involved, they are essentially there to dig. But away from such controlled circumstances, governmental frameworks for dealing with cultural heritage are either less developed or do not exist at all. Here, archaeologists can find themselves enmeshed in matters that go far beyond the technical and, not uncommonly, do so in societies where local attitudes and belief systems are very different to their own. This requires a skill-set for which ‘standard’ archaeological education and training has not necessarily equipped them. This chapter offers a narrative of one such example, which took place on the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena during 2007–8. Here, a team of experienced British field archaeologists, tasked with the excavation of a graveyard of considerable size and international significance, came to deal with the dead— and the living—on a number of fundamental levels that extended far beyond the project brief.