Current thoughts on treatment of human bodies or body parts in museums?

[Paul_B]

I was listening to a r4 programme about history of museums, their fashions through the ages and treatment of remains in this modern world. It also went on about repatr of artifacts focusing on the theft of Benin bronzes and their return (to whom and what about the fact a lot were created by slave dealing people of Benin for the king).

Anyway, I'm not discussing artifacts but human remains. There's a few interested in archeology and a few who are or were archaeologists. So I thought I'd ask if anyone knew what the current thinking in the trade so to speak for dealing with human remains. Is it still considered right to keep? What if more recent? There's a thing about indigenous remains being repatriated but who to? Native American tribes are active in this area I heard but some only believe it right to take back bodies of ppl they're related to. Others just want them all back. Others are older so do you bury in modern potentially Christian style?

I'm not looking at debates of a political nature, just wondering if anyone knew if there is any consensus forming or a change in modern museums / archaeology sector / historical sector views on human remains, respect and treatment?

 

[Mesquite]

Interesting you raised this not long after the British Museum and Scotlands National Museum are saying that it's dehumanising and outdated to call mummiefied remains Mummies.

Personally I've never been at ease seeing human remians on display for people to gawp at and am totally behind anyone who wants the remains returned to where they come from

 

[Tengu]

The crowd pleaser of the Museum, beloved of small children and little old ladies...

...And a good way to educate people about the past. (if done sympathetically, which I suspect is the real issue).

Does this tell us more about our troublesome attitudes to Death, rather than Museums themselves?

 

[Toddy]

There are three things here.

Research.
Education.
Human Interest.

For research, the body parts do not need to be exhibited, but they need to remain available for further research/ proof of research.

Education, they don't need to be exhibited, but that is often the most straightforward way to make them accessible to the greatest number of those being educated.

Human Interest, is at times a very offensive thing, but it's also often the only way to introduce money into a system that does not value cultural heritage. If that shows something gory enough to attract an audience all too often that's what was kept and displayed.

Personally, as an archaeologist, I have made my wishes clear. I want my remains cremated and scattered near the river

Do I find human remains as an 'exhibit' offensive.
On the whole, yes I do.

However, where I live there is a very, very long history of people using this land, and our ancestors cremated their dead and buried those fragments in big urns. Those urns are themselves incredible 'documents' of an unwritten past.
Several of those cinerary urns and their contents are exhibited in local museums.
I don't find that offensive, even knowing that the ones who loved them and commited their loved ones to the urns and the earth would most likely be offended and upset. I think that it tells us, their descendants, more clearly than anything else, that they existed, that they knew love and care, and were incredibly able and creative people.





Case example.
An archaeologist called Jack G. Scott, was a prolific excavator in the latter half of the 20th century here in the West of Scotland. He was not prolific about writing up his excavations though, and left the local museums with masses of 'stuff' to be dealt with.
He excavated Lesmahagow Priory, lifted the bones of the burials within, and about a ton of oyster shells.....the bones were boxed (as were all those shells) and stored in a local museum....and years later the museum was flooded and the archive boxes collapsed in a soggy mess. So they dried them out with an industrial dryer which kind of just allowed the boxes to settle like soggy papier mache.
They were then moved to another museum, and in the basement of that museum I was given the task of re-accessing all those bones.
The craniums split along the fontanelles, I gathered them up like pieces of a broken bowl. The 'cap' split off the femurs, the ribs were cracked and splintered the verterbrae came apart like bone meal.
I carefully sorted, packed and re-boxed those bones for weeks on end. I could feel them, smell them, breathed them .....went outside and threw up. All those years ago no one had masks. I seriously questioned my chosen career at that point.
Anyhow.

It felt wrong. These were the bones of men who had lived and died in that Priory. They were all men, so the likelihood was that they were the monks who had lived there as brothers. Who had been buried with Christian rites, in a place that was sanctified to their faith, and they had been rudely lifted out of their graves by a man on a mission to excavate everything he could. To end up a rickle of bones un-named in a carefully labelled and recorded box in the basement of a museum among a thousand other boxes.

They ought to be re-buried in the priory grounds. That's my opinion on the matter. I told that to the museum director and I told that to my University supervisor.
As far as I know to this day those bones are still in the museum basement.

So, this is fresh in my mind. It's not my church, or my faith, but I'm going to contact the local priest and tell him this tale. After all these years maybe he can have someone within his church find out if the bones are indeed still in archival boxes, and if so, see to it that they are given a decent re-burial within their faith. Because sure as eggs are eggs no one's using them for research.

M

 

[Stew]

There are three things here.

Research.
Education.
Human Interest.

For research, the body parts do not need to be exhibited, but they need to remain available for further research/ proof of research.

Education, they don't need to be exhibited, but that is often the most straightforward way to make them accessible to the greatest number of those being educated.

Human Interest, is at times a very offensive thing, but it's also often the only way to introduce money into a system that does not value cultural heritage. If that shows something gory enough to attract an audience all too often that's what was kept and displayed.

Personally, as an archaeologist, I have made my wishes clear. I want my remains cremated and scattered near the river

Do I find human remains as an 'exhibit' offensive.
On the whole, yes I do.

However, where I live there is a very, very long history of people using this land, and our ancestors cremated their dead and buried those fragments in big urns. Those urns are themselves incredible 'documents' of an unwritten past.
Several of those cinerary urns and their contents are exhibited in local museums.
I don't find that offensive, even knowing that the ones who loved them and commited their loved ones to the urns and the earth would most likely be offended and upset. I think that it tells us, their descendants, more clearly than anything else, that they existed, that they knew love and care, and were incredibly able and creative people.

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Case example.
An archaeologist called Jack G. Scott, was a prolific excavator in the latter half of the 20th century here in the West of Scotland. He was not prolific about writing up his excavations though, and left the local museums with masses of 'stuff' to be dealt with.
He excavated Lesmahagow Priory, lifted the bones of the burials within, and about a ton of oyster shells.....the bones were boxed (as were all those shells) and stored in a local museum....and years later the museum was flooded and the archive boxes collapsed in a soggy mess. So they dried them out with an industrial dryer which kind of just allowed the boxes to settle like soggy papier mache.
They were then moved to another museum, and in the basement of that museum I was given the task of re-accessing all those bones.
The craniums split along the fontanelles, I gathered them up like pieces of a broken bowl. The 'cap' split off the femurs, the ribs were cracked and splintered the verterbrae came apart like bone meal.
I carefully sorted, packed and re-boxed those bones for weeks on end. I could feel them, smell them, breathed them .....went outside and threw up. All those years ago no one had masks. I seriously questioned my chosen career at that point.
Anyhow.

It felt wrong. These were the bones of men who had lived and died in that Priory. They were all men, so the likelihood was that they were the monks who had lived there as brothers. Who had been buried with Christian rites, in a place that was sanctified to their faith, and they had been rudely lifted out of their graves by a man on a mission to excavate everything he could. To end up a rickle of bones un-named in a carefully labelled and recorded box in the basement of a museum among a thousand other boxes.

They ought to be re-buried in the priory grounds. That's my opinion on the matter. I told that to the museum director and I told that to my University supervisor.
As far as I know to this day those bones are still in the museum basement.

So, this is fresh in my mind. It's not my church, or my faith, but I'm going to contact the local priest and tell him this tale. After all these years maybe he can have someone within his church find out if the bones are indeed still in archival boxes, and if so, see to it that they are given a decent re-burial within their faith. Because sure as eggs are eggs no one's using them for research.

M

About 10 - 15 minutes walk from me there is a supposed Anglo-Saxon burial mound. I have thought a few times how interesting it would be to excavate and find out for sure if it is (there’s no obvious info on real facts) but have reflected that really some things should be left alone. It’s an interesting place to stand atop of and contemplating what’s below.

 

[Ozmundo]

I think this kind of debate comes and goes as a “fashion” and says a lot about the modern western detachment from the process of death.

I’ve met cultures who are much more “hands on” with the dead. It wasn’t so long ago we were like that in this country too.

I kind of prefer it. Probably upbringing and being born in the same small cottage that the majority of my ancestors were born and died in. Unfortunately have sell it to elderly pay care fees, well we’ve only been there for 500 years.

 

[Ozmundo]

My family were in the RN or Merchant Marine during WW2, I don’t take issue with diving the wrecks, I do so myself.

It’s overlooked a lot of the wrecks were blown up during the war to disperse them, or cut down afterward and salvaged. Even “war graves”.

I’d happily visit ossuaries and such if we had many in this country. I find them fascinating and like the connection to previous generation.

I can see some might get humpty about a mummified corpse on individual public display. Depends on context, I’d rather they were part of their own culture if such still exists. But I also feel having the dead accessible “humanises” the past rather than “dehumanis” the subject.

Having a load of excavated bones stored (as time carelessly) for decades without any real purpose does feel disrespectful to me however.

 

[Ystranc]

As already mentioned, context and the age of the remains have a lot to do with it but human remains should always be treated with respect regardless of age, origin or religion.

 

[Tengu]

Some bodies were meant to be on display.

And many folk lived with their dead.

 

[Ystranc]

Some bodies were meant to be on display.

And many folk lived with their dead.

Very true, there was a couple in mid Wales who kept a dead relative so they could continue claiming their pension and benefits…(I suspect that isn’t what you meant though )

 

[Toddy]

Some bodies were meant to be on display.

And many folk lived with their dead.

Usually buried beneath their floors though.....Catal Huyuk comes to mind.

Çatalhöyük - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Laurentius]

Can't say I was ever keen on the display of mummies as a kid, they creeped me out, way too spooky. I guess Hollywood is to blame for that. I still don't like viewing human remains on display, I am not against scientific analysis but bodies don't belong in museums.

 

[Toddy]

It feels like the ultimate dishonour. Displayed helpless for anyone to look.
I don't believe they would have wanted that; that their families would have wanted that for them.

 

[mikehill]

I find it disgusting .. unless it was their explicit wishes.

 

[Paul_B]

The r4 programme that got me thinking about this talked about native Americans / first nation bodies recovered from battle sites I think between other tribal groupings. ReIativwly modem, western archaeologists dug them up and put them on show. Cue more modern times and tastes for what is right or the idea of respect for remains or simply modern museum tastes and fashions of their visitors led to a rethinking of this display.

It also extended to the sacred objects that had from those cultures. This led to such museums taking on people from those tribal people to run such displays and provide the narrative on the objects. A kind of way to stave off the pressure to hand "back" the objects to representatives of the tribe.

But handing back sacred objects to the tribe that still uses such objects is easy. With bodies it isn't. Which tribe they're from is not always known. Some don't matter for them they believe they should treat them now they believe their dead should be treated. Other tribes hold equally deeply beliefs that you can only give funereal ceremonies from people in your tribe, or your direct ancestors or even people you know about. To do otherwise is plain wrong.

It's this conundrum I'm curious about. Any option chosen is likely to be disagreed with by someone or some groups/lobbies. So what to do? Should there be a universally applied option? Case by case? Is it culture dependent? Is the field of archeology and museum curation starting to coalesce around an option or view on bodies and sacred objects in museum collections?

My view on this is not really relevant as I'm not of a tradition that's affected, yet, nor a culture affected.

 

[Paul_B]

Near me there's two old buildings for which remains are or were an issue, one a big farm building which a skull was found in the wall where a stone brick should have been. The farm was a holding point for slavers before they sailed across to America. The assumption was it was a slave's skull. Ithink it got buried in a local cemetery and iirc a representative from a west African nation that was involved / victim of the slave trade.

Another building reputable has the body of the stone mason who died just as a flight if stairs was finished that he had done most of the work on. Apparently it was a mark of respect and agreed with him / family, no idea if true just a story handed down the family who built and owned the hall, until local council got it fit outdoor residential centre for schools and kids.

I bet there's many similar stories and real remains all around the country to consider too.

 

[Stew]

Ancient Roman Road--and Skeletons--Right Underfoot at new McDonald's Fast Food "Museum"

Ancient Roman Road--and Skeletons--Right Underfoot at new McDonald's Fast Food "Museum", Fast Food Museum in Italy, McDonald's builds restaurant on top of Ancient Roman Road in Italy, Ancient Roman roads, archaeology, ancient Rome, Roman history, Mcdonald

www.grandvoyageitaly.com

 

[Mesquite]

It's totally wrong when you have places like the Seattle Olde Curiousity Shop which has Sylvester the Mummified cowboy on display along with Sylvia, a female mummy and numerous shrunken human heads on display which are purely for folks to gawp at and serve no scientific purpose.

That's so disrespectul to the people they were.

 

[Tengu]

Mark my words; the real issue is HOLLYWOOD.

 

[Paul_B]

The real issue is human nature. Without people wanting to see such things for their pleasure there wouldn't be such places. We as a species is capable of good and bad, sometimes at the extreme ends of that spectrum too.

I sometimes think museums are only a little better. The museum above Preston library used to have a mummified hand and other body parts on display when I was young and very little educational benefit. No explanation or context just a display case at the top of the stairs with a collection random and unrelated artifacts as well as body parts pointlessly on display.