Bones and injustices: provenance research, restitutions and identity politics

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed increasing numbers of “provenance research” projects investigating the histories of human remains in academic collections and leading to their restitution. Such projects explicitly and implicitly address the historical injustices and their continuities of amassing people’s mortal remains and their subsequent use by those who have appropriated them. This article considers which historical wrongdoings provenance research and restitutions attempt to address and how effective they are in doing so. Firstly, the article points towards the relatively effective recognition of spiritual and emotional injustice. Secondly, it discusses the limited recognition of “race science’s” history and legacies and of its logic’s persistence in a social essentialism that inheres in contemporary handling of such human remains. Thirdly, it discusses how recognition of past oppression, dispossession and exploitation ties to broader political goals and attempts at redistribution.