Inside the human remains store

Abstract

The repatriation of the human remains of Indigenous people collected within a colonial context has been the subject of controversy and debate within UK museums over the last thirty years. Although the main focus of the debates has been the arguments for and against return, the discussions have also formed part of a wider social dialogue about human remains and body parts that has raised questions around consent and the dead as objects of display. These ongoing debates about the display of remains, and the engagement with alternative narratives precipitated by repatriation claims, has led to a reconsideration of all human remains held in UK museum collections, something that was both influenced by, and contributed to, the development of museological thinking and a broader re-articulation of museum ethics. The result of this process has been guidelines and human remains policies that have respectful treatment at their core, however this is such a contextual concept it has proved difficult to link ideology to practice. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of the impacts of repatriation on museum practice, this chapter departs from the discussions that focus on policy and the display of human remains to instead consider human remains within UK museum stores and the meanings that they hold for the people who work with them. Incorporating field diary entries and interview extracts from research in five UK museums, this chapter builds on recent on work in cultural geography and museum studies on materiality and the relations between people, things, practices and buildings. By comparing and contrasting how human remains are conceptualised and treated with respect across the different institutions the multiplicity of competing and cohering meanings are revealed. This focus on materiality means the simplistic framing of human remains as ‘objects’ or ‘ancestors’ can be left behind, enabling the agency of the remains themselves, and the impact repatriation has had on that agency, to be made explicit.