Old bones, teeth and hair are essential for our understanding of human history, health and disease. Yet over the last decade this important material has been sent from museum research laboratories in America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and some European countries to the place of origin for reburial, effectively destroying the evidence they hold.
who should own them?
British museums have been a refuge for international scientists studying the cadavers still above ground. This is about to change. A working group appointed by the British government has issued a report recommending the law is changed to make it possible for museums and educational institutions to release remains. It suggests that in the name of respecting other beliefs these institutions should be empowered to relinquish human remains and that a panel of independent experts is set up to mediate the cases for return.
Around 132 British collections hold human remains that amount to at least 61,000 items. Research on these has shed light on large-scale patterns of human evolution, adaptation, migration and historical contact. Demographic studies have explored lifestyle, diet and the impact of the environment on the body. Studies of osteoperosis, breast cancer and other illnesses have also benefited. Most recently DNA studies have begun to reveal further information, and will continue to do so.
The Natural History Museum (NHM) in London holds an extensive and important collection of around 19,500 items. Study topics include the origins and evolution of mankind, the effects of environmental pollution on human health, occupational hazard and the investigation of diseases such as malaria.
The collection has been used by visiting doctors, to develop new techniques for knee replacement, and to train anthropologists working on the identification of victims in mass graves in Bosnia and Croatia. Recently Japanese dentists have been examining the impact of diet on dental disease.
Over half of the collection is from the British Isles. If the other remains are returned this selective reburial will compromise and bias the global sample. The collection of 400 (Australian) Aboriginals, for example, is under threat. The NHMs director, Sir Neil Chambers explains: It would be a great loss. As they are part of the human community these remains are an essential component to understanding the origin of human variety and our diverse abilities in combating disease.
The director of the Duckworth collection in Cambridge, Marta Mirazon Lahr echoes how important the variety of material is:
Much of the work that supported the Out of Africa theory which shows all humans are of recent African origin was done by measuring skulls and bones from this collection...It was the diversity of our samples that made this possible. If we lose our Australasian samples that will damage the collection irreparably. An end to knowledge for all?
Australia, Canada and New Zealand have returned major collections for reburial. America is forceful about repatriation. In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. It is a mandate for researchers and museums to return all human remains to their closest hereditary or cultural descendants who decide the future of the bones.
There has been a brutal impact upon collections. Backed by government, museums have sent back vital material to be covered in soil. Bill Billick from the Repatriation Office at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC told me that, to date we have sent back 3,300 human remains and 87,000 objects. These objects are associated with the remains, probably funerary items. 1,500 remains have been offered by the Smithsonian but are unclaimed. Once offered, even if unwanted, researchers are forbidden from working on them without permission from the tribe.
The Kennewick Man, found in 1996 on a riverbank in Washington State, is one of the many casualties of NAGPRA. Initial studies date it at around 9,600 years old, proving it to be of paleo-Indian age, and one of the oldest prehistoric skeletons to be found in North America.
Preliminary analysis suggested the bones are not American Indian but possibly European and the earliest found in this area. But before further research could be done the bones were confiscated. Under NAGPRA any human remains found in North America that predate Columbuss arrival in 1492 are considered American Indian.
Kennewick Man is one of many significant items unavailable for research. Others include the Buhl Woman from Idaho reburied in 1991 at an age of 10,800 years. The Pelican Rapids woman found in Minnesota was 7,800 years old and reburied in 1999. The Browns Valley Male aged 8,900 years was buried the same year. Who knows what they could have told us if only we were allowed to ask?
human remains or scientific resource?
Some of these remains were left before the pyramids were built and before any written human record. Today, thousands of years later, one group of people can decide their fate: those deemed their modern relatives. This is a position that Marta Mirazon Lahr questions:
Claims for repatriation are based on ideas of biological and cultural descent, but human populations are not bounded entities through time, and biological and cultural ancestral affiliation are fluid concepts who are the descendants of our Saxon skeletons, or Iron Age, or Norman ones? The idea of fixed groupings and cultural continuity over hundreds and thousands of years is unsound. People and geographic location remain stable for no more than a very small period of time. There is no clear link to people of the past. This notion advances ideas of fixed and separate races that should not be tolerated today and which have been disproved partly through scientific work on human remains.
Knowledge of these collections should belong to everyone. That one group can censor and obscure access to study on the basis of an identity from hundreds or thousands of years ago, threatens the future of all ideas and understanding.
The retreat of reason
Arguments for return make an emotional case. In the past graves of indigenous groups were looted by collectors. Repatriation would mean recognising some of the terrible damage done to these societies and make some amends.
Advocates assert that return will solve contemporary social problems. Rodney Dillon, a Tasmanian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner, travels the world campaigning for reburial. At a conference of receptive museum directors he argued:
Without our remains where they should be, buried where they belong, we cant cope. People are walking around with their heads down as their ancestors are not there. Dillon speaks passionately about their problems; water is polluted, few have good jobs and the education system is letting them down. It is clear many people are treated badly and that this must change. But with all the good will in the world, will sending back bones improve these circumstances? If anything it is a distraction, locating present-day problems in the past. It is the leaders in Australia today, like prime minister John Howard, that need to change society and to be held accountable.
The politics of apologising for past wrongs is problematic. It benefits those saying sorry who can claim to be ethical about something they had no responsibility for. It can increase feelings of hurt and vulnerability as claimants are encouraged to compete over just how badly their ancestors were treated. People should be treated well and as equals because they are human, not validated on the basis that their relatives were mistreated long ago.
The return of skeletons from important institutions is significant. They were once at the centre of the quest for knowledge. Those who established them had to fight to assert no religion or spiritual belief should hold any sway and society on the whole backed them up. Today this is no longer the case.
Many are ignoring the commitment to science and knowledge, and favouring views that argue the bones should be buried, for spiritual reasons, rather than studied. The sending back of human remains from important institutions in the west is significant as it suggests that secular values are no longer at the heart of those societies.
Thus, the battle of the bones is not simply a row between the west versus indigenous groups or science versus spiritual beliefs. The drive to destroy this evidence and embrace other beliefs is fuelled by the cultural left who once thought the role of research was paramount. The war has come from within a secular society that no longer believes in itself.
Society has been rocked by wider attacks on science and the search for knowledge and the museum world has suffered. People are turning their back on these scientific objectives and looking to find a new mission for themselves. Some find sanctuary in other spiritual beliefs and legitimacy in attacking the old ideas of a secular world. As Norman Palmer, the chair of the working group, suggested after visiting Australia to talk to campaign groups:
I approach this place with much humility. I gain a sense of the spirits and the ancestry here. If only we all had a sense of belonging like this. Many tribes were uninterested in the 1980s, when repatriation became an issue in the United States and Australia. Anthropology professor Russell Thornton, who was working at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC recounts that when the museum first contacted people about repatriation, most groups were generally focused on local issues, and did not respond.
Museums have had to work hard to get some tribes to accept the remains. Barbara Isaac, from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, describes the process as difficult. 80 of the 117 notices sent out to tribes about repatriating human remains in 1995 received no response. Some of those who did respond did not want the bones. In the end the museum could only begin a consultation about repatriation with three of the 117.
The drive to rebury by western curators is so strong that even when tribes cannot be found to take them back, they bury them anyway. As Nancy B. Rosoff, who was a curator at the National Museum for the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (NMAI) writes in the book Museums and Source Communities:
The issue of what to do with undocumented and unaffiliated remains is also complicated. NMAI decided to bury a group of 31 such human remains with the assistance of a Native American tribe in upstate New York; burial took place in the tribes cemetery. The museums board of trustees took the position that these remains were entitled to a decent place of rest. The British report cites a heartfelt but small level of interest from indigenous groups. Of the 60 institutions holding human remains from overseas only 13 have received requests for their return. A total of 33 requests in all have been made and some of these claims are repeats.
But the report states: While the total number of requests for return perhaps seems low at first sight (and some of the claims repeat earlier claims), it is essential to recognise that in many cases the beliefs and emotions leading to individual claims are strong.
The report from the working group puts the case for return in more forthright and aggressive terms than even Rodney Dillon could. Only one scientist was chosen to sit on the panel. The rest were museum professionals and lawyers sympathetic to return.
In the contemporary search for meaning we are destroying evidence that tells us about humanity. Rather, we need to have confidence in our ability to find significance ourselves and not turn to atavistic beliefs for reassurance in dark uncertain times. Human remains could contribute to humanity and knowledge in the 21st century. We should ask them to speak to future generations.
