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

[Bearmont]

We have a very strange relationship with death. It's definitely a repressed part of life in the western world, which makes us very susceptible to panic reactions, see: the last couple of years. I don't think it's cruel to introduce kids and young adults to hunting and butchery - if it's done right. Same with museums and human remains.

In Eastern Europe they have these macabre bone churches where the arches and the whole interior are literally made up of skulls and bones. They did that because they ran out of cemetary space at some point, I think it was during WW2. Anyway, what people consider respectful handling of remains seems to vary quite a lot between cultures, so there's always going to be things that someone or other is not going to be comfortable with. Real life exposure can be therapy.

Yeah, Hollywood and the saturation of murder in movies is a big problem. It's putting murder on a magic pedestal. It's hard to explain. Like playing with and intensifying our fear of it like a haunted house.

 

[Toddy]

In our country, the UK and in Ireland, we have a very, very moist and temperate climate.
Everything organic decays. Our lack of organic preservation outside of specific situations makes our past look impoverished, lacking the wonders and creativity of desert cultures, when the reality is that our past was vibrantly alive, full of capable and able people, too.

Generally bodies don't survive long in our soils. Even buried six feet down they don't survive, and bones end up much as I described those ones of the monks, fragile and crumbling.
Bone is basically a mineral scaffolding with collagen.
If the soil is at all acidic then the collagen disappears and the minerals of the bones are absorbed into the background soil.
That's why the Sutton Hoo, and other, ship burials appear to be empty graves. At best we can trace, with great care, the outline of where a body once lay in the slight changes observed in the soils.

In peat bogs though, in anaerobic conditions, the bones are 'dissolved' while the skin is effectively tanned. There the mineral content goes first while the collagen is preserved.

The only places where bone is actually supported instead of leached away are where there is already a mineral rich background. Shell middens for instance, chalk and flint rich areas sometimes.

The only real ossary I know of in the UK is in Hythe. (The tomb of the eagles isn't really an ossuary, it's a chambered cairn, a family/community grave)

I find it distressing in that all those unknown skulls in Hythe were someone's child. A child loved and cared for well enough to grow into adulthood. Someone who might have been someone we would happily sat and had a conversation with. Someone who had family, someone who had a life that we know nothing of, but that at some point their skeleton was disarticulated and the skull gathered up like some macabre collectors tally, to see how big a display could be created. They're no longer seen as individuals, they are simply, "Look at all those skulls !"

What I'm trying to say is that here preserved bodies and skeletons in good condition are rare, and when one considers the sheer number of people who have ever lived and died on these islands then then the skeletal remains that we have represent a really minuscule percentage.

I don't think it's a repressed part of our culture, I think it's an evolving part of our culture.
Cremation and Green burials are on the increase even though the population of those of religions who insist on burials, grows. The soil won't care; it'll dissolve them all one way or t'other.

As for the display of stripped down mummies and the like.....well put it this way. Do you lie there stripped down for folks to gawk at ? I doubt it.
Why should it happen to you in death ?
Courtesy, respect, common decency, call it what you like.
I wouldn't visit a freak show, I won't deliberately go and view displayed dead.

And yet, I was an archaeologist, I studied the people and the cultures of the past using the remains of their lives. That includes their physical remains. Oetzi is a classic example of one single incredibly serendipitous survival that gave so much information, changed and set definite times, and dna, etc. to early Europeans of the Bronze age in that region.
Should we not research using Oetzi's (we don't even know his name) remains ?

I know where our family lairs are, I know who is in them, I know that after all these years there's little left of them. I still don't want them dug up and displayed. I know where the cremations of my family went too, and that's something I can live with more easily.
Dust to dust, back into the wheel of life one way or t'other.

But, each to their own.

M

 

[Bearmont]

I remember my gran's burial and despite all of us feeling the way we felt, I was struck by how we give away the whole ritual of goodbye / burial to a group of people who have made it part of their business. If we were forced to do all of it ourselves, it would be at the very least awkward and uncomfortable.

In more rural areas like India, the family still does the ritual washing of the recently deceased. The first thing we do in such a situation is to call some kind of outside authority to handle what happens next.

Yeah, the scale of ancestry and history really is a trip.

 

[Toddy]

Ah, you mean a different matter entirely.
The funeral industry is an industry, but then most of us live within an industrialised world.

That last bit matters, because when Death and all of the rites pertaining to it were still part of the rural not urban, then yes, family was literally very hands on. From the women washing and shrouding the body to the men digging the grave and carrying the corpse to that grave.
It's still commonly that way in other more rural parts of the world.

Burying a body is a lot of physical work. The wealthy don't dig their family graves. They pay others to do that. In Ancient Greece and Rome (and in some places still) professional mourners were hired to publically wail the family's grief.....like a wedding in that conspicuous consumption was a public demonstration of the family's status and wealth.

Culture, religion, finances, all play roles in the rites of passage around death and burial.

Arguably that was so for those whose bodies, or parts thereof, were/are displayed in museums, etc.,

To answer the OP though. Yes, within my working lifetime there has been an enormous change in the way that such things are considered.
It is accepted that much of the 'looted' cultural heritage ought to be returned, where it's return is to a suitable situation.
It that suitable situation is the burial of human remains, or ghost shirts, scrolls, etc., then that has to be accepted as part of the cultural rights (note rights, not rites) and determination of the descendants/family/nation to which the individual belonged.

There are enormous issues though.
The adage about, "My religion says I must do this", fine, that's up to you.
but, "My religion says you must do this", is a no.
comes into consideration. The faith of the present is often not the faith of the past.

Either way, I think to most the public display of human remains is repugnant enough that it's becoming rarer.

Egypt's an anomally though. A muslim country where graves are desecrated and excavated and turned into exhibits. Where mummified corpses are displayed. However, they need the income from tourism and at least looting is 'recorded' for posterity and research.

Is that any different from the European displays of the bog bodies though ?


Denmark still has about thirty bodies displayed like this. (they have about 500 bog bodies, areas in their environment seems to preferentially preserve them)

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Either way, I think to most the public display of human remains is repugnant enough that it's becoming rarer.

Admittedly not everyone's cup of tea but the plastination 'Body Worlds' exhibitions for example, draw large crowds. Over 50 million visitors worldwide.

 

[Toddy]

Admittedly not everyone's cup of tea but the plastination 'Body Worlds' exhibitions for example, draw large crowds. Over 50 million visitors worldwide.

It did, it did indeed. But, that was a deliberate and permission very much given, spectacle.

Not some unsuspecting body taken out of the grave and displayed for the gawking pleasure of the masses.

 

[Paul_B]

Apparently my great gran was the person ppl came to for each end of life. Before the nhs there were many ppl like her who acted as midwife and funeral director. Often helping me life into the world and preparing the deceased by washing and dressing them in Sunday best for wake and burial. A remarkable woman by all accounts and not just for this reason.

A friend who's had generations living within a few valleys and hill farms not too far from where I live. He once took us to show where he would end up when he dies. Yes, his family has a whole corner of the local village church graveyard. He could point to ppl he knew and generations before he existed. When we all met up for walks in the wider area he would say one grandparent or another came from a farm up the hillside from one valley or another. It's rare to encounter so close a family roots in a small area like that. It's likely his family goes back many, many generations.

Plastination displays? Permission might have been granted but tbh I still find it wrong. The gawking ppl looking in some gory entertainment? How can that ever be right? Indiv giving permission for that to be done to their dead bodies is one thing but license to show them I don't agree with. Not my call though.

 

[British Red]

For me, disturbing human remains of any age out of curiosity is grossly disrespectful. I understand that sometimes a previously unknown grave is uncovered when building. If that happens then a respectful reinterment elsewhere is fine. But digging up graves and picking and prodding at skeletons, mummified remains etc. is both ghoulish and offensive. I quite understand that these people are long dead but saying that makes it okay is the equivalent of saying that poking around in someone else's underwear drawer is acceptable if they don't find out.

 

[Mesquite]

@British Red Out of curiousity Hugh what do you think of the targeted search and exhumation of Richard III's remains?

 

[Toddy]

Good research, but, there is a 'presumption in favour of preservation in situ', and I don't know if it was given any heed at all.
If the situation is stable (crossrail is an excellent example of an unstable preservation situation because of subsequent work) then how did they get round it ?

M

 

[British Red]

@British Red Out of curiousity Hugh what do you think of the targeted search and exhumation of Richard III's remains?

Why exhume him? So many of these people say "it's important to know" but are unable to explain why its important. Let the dead rest in peace.

 

[Paul_B]

Can't identify it without digging it up. Without that it's a body in an carpark. Besides if a body has been found doesn't it have to be dug up and examined just in case it's a victim of a more recent event. One final reason is the carpark isn't a burial place recognised as such by Christian traditions. AIUI he's from a roman Catholic tradition back then so perhaps time he got a burial under that tradition.

Personally I think there's a degree of public interest in examining his body in light of the Tudor / Shakespearean hatchet job on him. The idea he was a deformed, hunchback unable to perform physical acts.

i believe following his extraction from the carpark his remains were examined. I remember a documentary showed a man with a very similar level of spinal curvature and similar issues indicated by the bones. They kitted him out in full military kit from that era and he could perform perfectly well without his condition holding him back. Plus when clothed you couldn't tell he had an issue.

Sorry! I'm a bit of a supporter if those actually looking into Richard III and the contemporary records of him that survived the Tudor era. Time we found out the truth if at all possible. However I do believe his body has been respectfully treated, being reinterred in Leicester cathedral. Not on display anywhere. Unlike mummies and other remains.

 

[Stew]

Can't identify it without digging it up. Without that it's a body in an carpark. Besides if a body has been found doesn't it have to be dug up and examined just in case it's a victim of a more recent event. One final reason is the carpark isn't a burial place recognised as such by Christian traditions. AIUI he's from a roman Catholic tradition back then so perhaps time he got a burial under that tradition.

Personally I think there's a degree of public interest in examining his body in light of the Tudor / Shakespearean hatchet job on him. The idea he was a deformed, hunchback unable to perform physical acts.

i believe following his extraction from the carpark his remains were examined. I remember a documentary showed a man with a very similar level of spinal curvature and similar issues indicated by the bones. They kitted him out in full military kit from that era and he could perform perfectly well without his condition holding him back. Plus when clothed you couldn't tell he had an issue.

Sorry! I'm a bit of a supporter if those actually looking into Richard III and the contemporary records of him that survived the Tudor era. Time we found out the truth if at all possible. However I do believe his body has been respectfully treated, being reinterred in Leicester cathedral. Not on display anywhere. Unlike mummies and other remains.

What does it matter now though?

 

[Toddy]

Examined and to be reburied in consecrated ground.

Hundreds of skeletons under old department store

Archaeologists think they have unearthed a medieval priory and graves below an old shop.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Paul_B]

What does it matter now though?

Do you hold that view about everything in our past? That'll write off history, archeology and perhaps pale9ntology

 

[Stew]

Do you hold that view about everything in our past? That'll write off history, archeology and perhaps pale9ntology

That hasn’t answered the question. Why not just leave him alone. Why does it have to be investigated? It’s not going to change anything now. Leave him be. Why is your view that he should be dug up and examined more important than someone else wanting to have a body on display?

 

[British Red]

Do you hold that view about everything in our past? That'll write off history, archeology and perhaps pale9ntology

How does leaving graves alone write off history? History is full of all sorts of sources from written and oral records through buildings & foundations to the Bayeux tapestry. Archeology similarly isn't devoted to human remains - it encompasses dendrochronology to pottery.

 

[walker]

Went to see Dr Gunter's exhibition while in Amsterdam years ago .
Excellent seeing all the plasticated bodies in different poses and seeing how everything is inside your body works. The people donated there bodies and your asked not to take pictures out of respect which I understand.

 

[walker]

As for bodies from hundreds or even thousands of years ago no one knows them and there part of our history .
Different cultures from around the world have different ways dealing with there dead ,dressing them up or arranging there bones.
No body complained about dinosaur fossils or old animal skeletons and were no different as we're all animals in a way

 

[Paul_B]

That hasn’t answered the question. Why not just leave him alone. Why does it have to be investigated? It’s not going to change anything now. Leave him be. Why is your view that he should be dug up and examined more important than someone else wanting to have a body on display?

It was a tongue in cheek comment. If you want an answer I'll give my opinion which is no more valid than yours. I'm no expert perhaps there's someone on here who is and can answer better. I'll give it a go from my pov if that's what you want.

First off R3 was about 32 when he died following a rather daring charge on Henry. He was a highly capable fighter and it nearly paid off. In his very short period of time on the throne he was making changes to the courts putting in a degree of professionalism into it. He was modernising and actually put in laws and measures that likely helped the poor and lower classes from what I read. He wasn't a weakling, outwardly physically deformed and all the other things we "kmow" him for from Shakespeare and Tudor sources hundred plus years later.

Of course that doesn't explain why he should be dug up. It explains why it's worth studying him, respectfully, once dug up. Of course it might be good to help combat the image of him from tidy. The reason to dig up could be to do with the fact that he was a Catholic king who was buried in the grounds of a church in a monastic friary under Catholic traditions. Following the reformation under Henry VIII it got destroyed. His body was buried in consecrated ground but it was no longer so. Perhaps it's more respectfull to find and reinter in consecrated ground under the same religious traditions he practised?

Personally I think that is one good reason. If in doing so we learn what his reported deformity was and its implications on his abilities as a king / man in his 30s I think that's good. Especially considering the fact there's very little contemporary information to counter or support later Tudor representation of him.

As to my not too serious comment, bodies are dug up to remove to a more appropriate place for various reasons. There's a lot of it for HS2 for example. In doing so there's a chance to study the past. There's a theory about the value of history along the lines of learning about your past to inform your future. No idea how that relates to digging up bodies, but I certainly learnt a lot about those times when his body was found and dig up. I learnt about him and what they know he did as opposed to the opportunistic version of his life from those who ended his reign and line. I don't think that would be the case without his discovery, study and subsequent re-burial.