Human Remains In Museums Research Articles

Materializing mortality: Re‐enchanting grave goods in the British Museum using mixed‐method approaches to audience research

AbstractGrave goods are among the most common, but at the same time most powerful, objects on display in many museums. They possess the rare—often latent—ability to convey both particular and universal themes and to collapse chronological and cultural differences by connecting the shared embodiment of museum visitors and past people. To explore these values, this study draws on the results of two phases of in‐depth, mixed‐methods audience research before and after a rapid and low‐cost interpretative intervention: the “Death, Memory and Meaning” trail in the later prehistoric galleries of the British Museum. The analysis highlights the importance of fore‐fronting intimacy and the complex relationship between bodies and objects. It also demonstrates the importance of contextual, emotionally and spiritually connected approaches to the presentation of grave goods. Our findings are especially timely given the intensification of ethical concerns surrounding displays of prehistoric European human remains in museums.

Between objects and lives: Exploring ethics in pathological museums and collections

This article addresses the complex intersection between ethics, museums and pathology collections through a historical analysis that dates back to the 18th century, when medical ethics began to be codified. The text explores the current context, where ethical concerns expand to the medical collections. The objective of this article is to analyze the complex ethical issues involved in the preservation and exhibition of human remains in museums and medical collections, considering historical developments, contemporary challenges and the need for a contextualized ethical approach. To achieve this objective, a methodology was adopted that combines historical research, critical analysis of academic literature and ethical reflection addressing issues related to the preservation and exhibition of human remains in museums and medical collections. Some of the results achieved in this critical analysis include identifying the lack of common guidelines for dealing with human remains in museums, highlighting the delicate balance between conservation and access. It is argued that an effective ethical approach must recognize the complexity of human remains, considering them both as scientific objects and as lived lives, and emphasizes the importance of historical contextualization to ethically discern the treatment of these collections. Ultimately, it is concluded that medical ethics and museological approaches are subject to continuous change, highlighting the importance of keeping up with transformations in the field. Keywords: Deontology; Scientific heritage; Museology

Between objects of science and lived lives. The legal liminality of old human remains in museums and research

ABSTRACT Collections of old human remains in museums are currently under increased scrutiny and pressure. On the one hand they are problematised from a post-colonial and human rights point of view as the material remains of historic and ongoing structural violence connected to scientific knowledge production. On the other, new methods in archaeological science have led to increasing demand for destructive sampling. Without guidance and support by laws and formal standardised professional guidelines, museums may find themselves squeezed from two opposing sides. Based on an analysis of laws and professional guidelines, and a large-scale survey of the practical handling of old human remains in Swedish museums, this article argues that the lack of a shared professional process that recognises the complexity of old human remains as both objects of science and lived lives, risks undermining the role of museums in their relationship to both the public and the research community.

The Plunder of Maqdala: Ethical Concerns Around Belongings and Ancestral Remains in Museums

During the colonial period, museums did not just passively benefit from the plunder of human remains and culturally sacred items. When Britain sent a punitive military expedition to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1863, it was accompanied by Richard Holmes, a staff member of the British Museum, whose purchase of loot from the expeditionary force institutionalised the plunder of cultural heritage. His inclusion in the expeditionary force was carefully planned, though the belongings he took — mainly manuscripts, religious items and emblems of power belonging to the Ethiopian royal family — were not the intended focus of his participation. Whilst the UK’s 2004 Human Tissue Act had a beneficial impact on the treatment of human remains in museums, objects belonging to colonised people are often still positioned as artworks or artefacts, evidencing ignorance of the deep personal and spiritual links that connect them back to their communities of origin. This article draws on our professional experience of curation and research in museums and libraries, as well as the impact of ICOM’s new Museum Definition on our practice. Joint research on the Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections. This article addresses the problematic relationship between collecting and imperial power, the false dichotomy between ‘artefacts’ (belongings) and ‘human remains’ (ancestors) and the need to decolonise collections through further research and the recognition of ongoing cultural and physical violence.

Utilizing Human Remains for Science: Ethical, Legal, and Scientific Issues in Croatia, United Kingdom and the United States

The study of human remains has a significant impact on the present society. They are utilized in research, in fields studying the human past and origins, in epidemiology, the study of anatomy and morphology, pathology and trauma, and form a part of museum exhibits. On the other hand, they are significant to various groups in cultural, religious, spiritual, and personal ways. Therefore, these factors should be considered when conducting research. Although some countries ensure legal protection of human remains, usually, such concerns usually cover remains that are younger than 100 years. The differences between countries in legal protections and also the cultural, religious, and ethical attitudes that underlie them can hinder international cooperation. The current collaborative research study sought to investigate and compare such differences between Croatian, United Kingdom’s and United States’ approach to the study of human remains encompassing the following: definitions of human remains as cultural goods, legal issues with obtaining custody over the body parts, compensations for the next of kin for the use of human remains for science, and public perceptions about obtaining body parts for scientific purposes through cultural and religious aspects in perspective with religious beliefs, education, place of origin, gender and attitudes towards science. After collecting data and determining all the above mentioned factors, our aim is to propose the policies on utilizing human remains on multilateral/international level (especially regarding human remains in museums and related institutions) through guidelines, taking into account the differences in ethnicity, religion and degree of formal education between social groups in different countries.

Beyond All Price: Victorian Hair Jewelry, Commemoration & Story-Telling

When the Rothschild Foundation and National Trust commissioned the artist Jane Wildgoose to present an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor, the country mansion built for Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839–1898) containing his magnificent collection of eighteenth-century French decorative arts and European paintings, she focused not on the grandeur of the house or the luxury of its contents, but on a simple lock of hair and a tiny photograph of Ferdinand’s wife, Evelina (1839–1866). This essay gives an account of how these humble objects held the key to a deeply personal story relating to Ferdinand and Evelina. Focusing on the materiality of human hair, and the complex codes for mourning in the late Victorian period, Wildgoose unravels some of the meanings associated with nineteenth-century mourning jewelry, including examples selected from the Rothschild collections and the Royal Collection to accompany Evelina’s hair and photograph in her exhibition Beyond All Price. It also discusses her research trip to Leila’s Hair Museum in the USA, where she learnt techniques for making wreaths from human hair in order to be able to make new pieces of hairwork for the exhibition. The essay concludes with discussion about Wildgoose’s ongoing work with donated human hair, and her associated research into the historical circumstances that led to a “unique status” being ascribed to human remains in collections, in the UK government’s Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums.

Drawing connections: art, medicine and surgery

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I introduce the concept of drawing not just as a noun but as a verb, an activity, that can be used as a tool to gain greater insight and understanding across a breadth of medical sciences. This is rooted within the act of slow looking, and slow drawing, taking the time to really look at phenomena and respond to it by observing closely, analysing and collecting visual data through the activity of drawing. Examples briefly outlined include the visual investigation of a rare congenital disease, aspects of the experiences of ageing, the role of human remains in museums and how drawing can be used as a pedagogical tool for those training in medicine.

On Not Showing Scalps: Human Remains and Multisited Debate at the National Museum of Denmark

AbstractMuseums are increasingly taking the cultural values of source communities into account in their representational strategies, and that means that they now face the challenge of explaining to their publics how social responsibility toward distant source communities informs the choices each museum makes. This article examines how the National Museum of Denmark attempted to inform and discuss with the Danish public the museum's decision to not exhibit scalps in their temporary exhibition on Native American culture, Powwow: We Dance, We're Alive. Building on the new, contingent museum ethics proposed by Janet Marstine, the editor of the Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics, I show how the museum succeeded in engaging users in questions of museum ethics. However, this specific debate on human remains in museums developed into an encounter between a global, museological discourse on the responsibility of museum institutions toward indigenous groups and a common discourse in Danish political debates that views consideration toward the sensibilities of specific ethnic groups as a threat toward free speech and rational knowledge.

Petite rhétorique narrative des restes humains muséaux

Les restes humains des collections muséales sont l’objet d’attachements de la part des vivants et deviennent de puissants supports de narration. Ce court article tente de cerner les grandes lignes de cette construction.

The Collection and Exhibition of a Fetal and Child Skeletal Series

AbstractDiscussions of repatriation dominate the topic of human remains in museums. For the large portion of remains that are not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, however, concerns regarding how to curate, exhibit, and interpret them are paramount, especially when the remains are those of children. The contents of anthropological collections often reflect a shared past that may be uncomfortable to address, but was formative and valuable to the discipline. Understanding the motivations and circumstances that contributed to bringing human remains into museums, as well as the changing uses and interpretations of those remains over time, is an are important aspect of collections care and public engagement. This article examines a skeletal series of fetuses and children at the National Museum of Health and Medicine as a case study for uncovering and conveying to museum visitors the complex histories behind the acquisition, curation, and display of juvenile human remains. [Army Medical Museum, National Museum of Health and Medicine, juvenile human remains, exhibition, visitor studies, museum collecting, history of anthropology]

The Dark Value of Criminal Bodies: Context, Consent, and the Disturbing Sale of John Parker's Skull.

The recent sale of a human skull at an auction in Sussex should raise ethical concerns. Whenever human body parts are sold or put in a glass case and displayed for public view people should be provided with context and extensively informed about what they see. The gaze is never innocent, and to ignore the particular journeys that body parts take into auction rooms, anatomy departments, and museums is to be complicit in acts of historical injustice. In this case the skull was that of John Parker, who was executed by hanging in 1813. The likelihood that this was illicitly obtained by medical professionals means that the sale of the skull at auction two hundred years later is fraught with ethical problems. Along with a discussion of context, fragments like Parker’s skull must therefore also become part of a debate about consent. Issues of context and consent can help us think about the display of human remains in museums in a manner that is intimate and ‘disturbingly informative’ (Mütter Museum 2014). However, the sale of Parker’s skull – described as an ‘antique piece’ in the press coverage (BBC News 2014) – is a reminder that the global marketplace in objectified body parts is disturbing in quite a different manner.1

Touching the Deep Past

ABSTRACTThe nineteenth century was fascinated with the display of human remains in museums. The most celebrated of such exhibits was the Egyptian mummy, which served as the subject of a range of sensorial investigations. Museum mummies were gawked at and sometimes handled by museum goers. Outside of the museum, mummy unwrappings were popular public spectacles. Travelers to Egypt often brought back a mummy hand or foot as an essential tourist souvenir. Scientists, for their part endeavored to categorize mummies by their varying colors, textures, and aromas. These multisensory responses to the mummy were complemented by fictional accounts in which revivified mummies were depicted as exerting their own tactile power over their modern handlers. Such practices and stories point to a desire to physically connect with a bygone world in a modern age—a desire often accompanied by a fear of such contact with the past proving overwhelming. The fact that mummies might be regarded as trophies of conquest by imperialist Europeans suggests that the concern with touching and being touched by the mummy also represented a Western ambivalence towards colonial subjects.

‘Who are we to decide?’ Internal challenges to cultural authority in the contestation over human remains in British museums

In the past three decades, human remains in museum collections have become the focus of contestation. This paper analyses the construction of the issue in Britain. The literature on contestation in the museum primarily identifies external influences: the market, the pressure of social movements and intellectual currents. I propose an additional influence of internal activism. Drawing on empirical material, I demonstrate important campaigning activity waged by actors inside the institution. The activities of campaigning museum professionals in promoting this issue is a response to a crisis of cultural authority, which has come about after decades of unremitting questioning of the purpose of the institution. The museum is traditionally understood as contributing to the cohesion and reproduction of capitalist society, as reinforcing dominant ideologies. These observations raise the question as to whether this function continues when members of the sector disown and question their authority.

Resolving the Human Remains Crisis in British Archaeology

Human remains are a fundamental part of the archaeological record, offering unique insights into the lives of individuals and populations in the past. Like many archaeological materials human remains require distinctive and specialised methods of recovery, analysis and interpretation, while technological innovations and the accumulation of expertise have enabled archaeologists to extract ever greater amounts of information from assemblages of skeletal material. Alongside analyses of new finds, these advances have consistently thrown new light on existing collections of human remains in museums, universities and other institutions. Given the powerful emotional, social and religious meanings attached to the dead body, it is perhaps unsurprising that human remains pose a distinctive set of ethical questions for archaeologists.

The International Symposium “From Anatomic Collections to Objects of Worship: Conservation and Exhibition of Human Remains in Museums,” Paris (France), February 22–23, 2008

The Musée du Quay Branly held an international symposium, “From Anatomic Collections to Objects of Worship: Conservation and Exhibition of Human Remains in Museums,” in Paris on February 22–23, 2008, at the museum's Théatre Claude Levy Strauss. The main purpose of the 2-day conference—opened by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication's Christine Albanel—was to stimulate an international debate on a multidisciplinary basis concerning the roles and responsibilities of museums in the exhibition and repatriation of human remains. The subject turned out to be topical, originating from the case of thetoi moko, the Maori tattooed head belonging to the collection of the Natural History Museum in Rouen, France, since 1875. The restitution of thetoi mokoto the Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, deliberated by the city of Rouen, was recently banned by the Administrative Tribunal of Rouen, on request of the Ministry of Culture at the end of 2007. The head actually belonged to a municipal museum, which was in fact part of the Musées de France, and therefore it was considered part of a public collection. Accordingly, the 2002 French statute providing for the inalienability of state properties was applicable.

Federal Repatriation Legislation and the Role of Physical Anthropology in Repatriation

Two laws governing the disposition of Native American human remains in museums and institutions have had a profound impact on anthropology, and especially physical anthropology. In contrast to the perception of constant conflict between Native Americans and physical anthropologists, the repatriation process based on these laws has been in large part harmonious between institutions and Native peoples in the US. Despite misconceptions, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAPGRA; 25 United States Code (U.S.C.) 3001-3013) was not intended to halt further research on Native American remains in museums. In fact, court decisions have affirmed that the documentation of human remains produces information no other methods can provide, and provides necessary evidence to be incorporated and weighed, along with other evidence, in evaluating "cultural affiliation," the legal term for the required connection from federally recognized Native American groups to their ancestors. The wide variety of osteological data collected at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Smithsonian Institution, have proven indispensable when evaluating cultural affiliation, especially when other information sources are unhelpful or ambiguous, and provide an empirical basis for determining the ancestry of individuals whose remains will be discovered in the future. To date, the claim-driven process at the NMNH has resulted in the affiliation and repatriation of more Native American remains than any other institution in the country. Repatriation experiences at the NMNH demonstrate the changing relationships between museums and Native peoples, the continuing important contributions that physical anthropology makes to the repatriation process, and the importance of physical anthropology in understanding the recent and ancient history of North America.

Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kindom Museums

Although the issues of retention and display of human remains have become topical over the last decade, the thoughts of museum visitors about this topic have not been registered, despite their being the museums’ main stakeholder. The vast majority (82.5%) of 300 respondents questioned in the summer of 2002 at three British museums displaying ancient Egyptian human remains supported the idea of having these remains on display. However, a small percentage of visitors (14.2%) wanted the remains displayed in a appropriate and respectful environment, and this may be the key future challenge for collections with human remains that have no cultural descendants. This paper summarises research into visitor perceptions of ancient Egyptian human remains in museum collections and on display in the United Kingdom and suggests further research into the various aspects of human remains in museums, particularly regarding more recent remains or those with cultural descendants.

Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kindom Museums

<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> Although the issues of retention and display of human remains have become topical over the last decade, the thoughts of museum visitors about this topic have not been registered, despite their being the museums’ main stakeholder. The vast majority (82.5%) of 300 respondents questioned in the summer of 2002 at three British museums displaying ancient Egyptian human remains supported the idea of having these remains on display. However, a small percentage of visitors (14.2%) wanted the remains displayed in a "more appropriate and respectful environment", and this may be the key future challenge for collections with human remains that have no cultural descendants. This paper summarises research into visitor perceptions of ancient Egyptian human remains in museum collections and on display in the United Kingdom and suggests further research into the various aspects of human remains in museums, particularly regarding more recent remains or those with cultural descendants. </span>

Natural catastrophes in Arctic populations: the 1878–1880 famine on Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska

This study draws on data from recent settlement surveys and new demographic data derived from repatriation-related assessments of human remains in museums to examine the circumstances of the 1878–1880 famine on Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska. The human data consist of a biased sample of individuals dying at these settlements. We compare this sample to an Arctic-specific model of population structure in order to identify and estimate segments of the population missing from the sample. The settlement-specific population estimates from the human remains are combined with population estimates derived from settlement data to give an island-wide population projection. The pre-famine population estimates indicate that the 1878–1880 famine mortality was over 90%. This tragic reduction in human population necessitated adoption of new hunting strategies that changed settlement patterns on the island. Migration of Yup’ik families from the Chukotka Peninsula after the famine is correlated with changes in house designs. This study suggests that cultural change was a significant feature of recovery from the famine and is an important factor in understanding cultural change in the archaeological record in the arctic.