Last week we introduced the concept of ethical dilemmas in archival work. One of the biggest one that most survey museums have is the subject of repatriation, or returning stolen artifacts to their place of origins. One of the biggest talking points of this matter is the British Musueum, and their extensive collection of looted artifacts that were taken from colonialism conquests. Home countries of these pieces are asking the museum to release their collection back to them so that the objects not only have the historical context, but the proper cultural context in their native land. In a subsection of this dilemma, the subject of human remains has become a hot topic of debate in archival circles.
Image: One dilemma I faced during my time as an archivist was dealing with human remains. In my case, the parties involved were consenting. However, that isn't always the case, as museums often have a large collection of mummies/skulls/fragments that were taken from their original resting place. What should collections do in cases like this?
I have my own experience with archiving human remains. In a past artist focused archive, I sat in on meetings about introducing the ashes of the deceased into the collection. To this day, I have never felt comfortable with the decision, but the ashes were allowed in the archive. The argument for their inclusion was that the family of the decease approved of the decision, however, I always felt that the decision should have been made explicitly clear from the subject in question. When we think of human remains in cultural repositories, these are often remains of people who had no say in what happened to their body after death. For example, Egyptian mummies were literally stolen from their tombs. How is displaying these remains any different from a grave digger? In next week’s final part on Ethical Dilemmas, we will look into a solution for solving these questions, and how the answer might just be right under our noses.
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