Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections...

Photo: Morbid Curiosity, taken at the Manchester Museum

To be published on 22nd October, Dr Tiffany Jenkins' book examines the crisis of cultural authority within museums:

Since the late 1970s human remains in museum collections have been subject to claims and controversies, such as demands for repatriation by indigenous groups who suffered under colonization. These requests have been strongly contested by scientists who research the material and consider it unique evidence.

This book charts the influences at play on the contestation over human remains and examines the construction of this problem from a cultural perspective. It shows that claims on dead bodies are not confined to once colonized groups. A group of British Pagans, Honouring the Ancient Dead, formed to make claims on skeletons from the British Isles. And ancient human remains, bog bodies and Egyptian mummies, which have not been requested by any group, have become the focus of campaigns initiated by members of the profession, at times removed from display in the name of respect.

By drawing on empirical research including extensive interviews with the claims-making groups, ethnographic work, document, media, and policy analysis, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections demonstrates that strong internal influences do in fact exist. The only book to examine the construction of contestation over human remains from a sociological perspective, it advances an emerging area of academic research, setting the terms of debate, synthesizing disparate ideas, and making sense of a broader cultural focus on dead bodies in the contemporary period.

Book of the Dead...

Image: Catatonic Man, Magenta Magazine 

This photograph is one of 52 images captured by Canadian photographer James Burman in his provocative new book, The Dead. The book is a collection of memento moris and post-mortem photography that documents his travels from the catacombs of Sicily to the gas chambers of Poland. You can read more about the book and the man in question here, which alas, is only available in the US and Canada at this time.

New thinking on what killed the people of Pompeii...

Image: the plaster cast of a man sits amid urns and fountains inside one of the storage rooms at the site of Pompeii, Global Post

New research shows that the population died from the extreme temperature carried by the volvano's pyroclastic flow, rather than suffocation by ash. For the full story, see here...

Queen of the Inch...

Image: BBC News

A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock, at the northern end of the Sound of Bute on the west coast of Scotland.

The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field- Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger. Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed again and studied using modern research techniques. Scientists have since been able to determine that the woman lived on Inchmarnock and came from the Clyde Estuary and that she did not eat seafood, despite the fact she lived on an island.

"She must have been a queen or chieftain or something very important in her own right. There were plenty of people who lived on the island but very very few were given cist burials and with something as spectacular as the necklace, which obviously she was allowed to keep. It was buried with her. It didn't pass on to anyone else," Anne Spiers, curator of archaeology at Bute Museum, said.

The reconstruction of the queen's head and the necklace, which was found to be made of Whitby jet, are now on show at Bute Museum. The current owner of Inchmarnock Island, Lord Smith of Kelvin, said it was now time for the remains to be reburied. He said: "It right that she goes back. When you speak with the researchers and scientists, obviously they wanted her for a period of time. But I was always clear that once they had actually looked at her properly, because we all need to understand what her forebears were like and what they did and so on, she had to go back."

Source: Stone Pages

Bronze Age man speaks...

Image: Culture 24

In 2005, academics moved the skeleton of a Bronze Age man found in 1834 in a makeshift grave of a hollowed-out Yorkshire tree to the Division of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford University.

Their aim was to end 170 years of conjecture by carrying out tests on the gangly skeleton, including a CT scan on his skull courtesy of Bradford Royal Infirmary.

As he heads back to his original home at Scarborough's decadent Rotunda Museum, a few of Gristhorpe Man's secrets have been rumbled, and he’s even about to speak for the first time in 4,000 years.

"Investigations by a team of us at Bradford showed that he was in his early 60s, had lived in the area most of his life and had usually been in good health," says Dr Alan Ogden, a dentist and osteologist who credits the corpse with being "the best preserved 4,000-year-old skeleton in Britain."

"He was tall and muscular and had lived on a rich and carefully prepared diet. We presume, therefore, that he was part of a local ruling family. His death was relatively sudden, and was probably related to a brain tumour revealed by our examinations."

Ogden wasn't finished with the skull. He used it to build a facial reconstruction of the skeleton which he’s installed at the Rotunda, complete with "software techniques" to animate Gristhorpe Man's face as he speaks in English.

"He would actually have spoken a form of Proto-Celtic that we can only guess at," concedes Ogden.

"Unfortunately such a model bears only as much likeness to a living person as a formal passport photograph. But by this means I hope that visitors to the Museum can visualise him as a living man, a senior figure in his society, used to being obeyed and probably even revered."

Karen Snowden, Head of Collections for Scarborough Museums Trust, says organisers at the museum are "really excited" about their more expressive returning son.

"His skeleton, grave goods and coffin are one of the most important group of objects in Scarborough’s collections, and we have been working with Bradford University for a few years now to fully understand this unique man and his history," she reflects.

"The story is now made more real with the addition of his voice."

Open 10am – 5pm (closed Mondays). Admission £4.50/£4 (£9/£8 for free re-entry for a year, free for under-18s.)

Source: Culture 24

Skeleton of dismembered child found by archaeologists...

Image: Dr Jill Eyers, Bucks Free Press

Archaeologists re-investigating a mass burial of 97 infants have discovered the skeleton of a dismembered child. The group has been carrying out tests on excavation finds from 1912 at the Yewden villa, examining the remains of the infants which were rediscovered in boxes kept at Buckinghamshire County Museum. The examination has revealed that the infants died at 40 weeks gestation, leading Chiltern archaeologists to suspect that the site in Hambleden could have been a Roman brothelm, where unwanted children were systematically killed.

For more on this story, see here or alternatively, check out the new BBC series 'Digging for Britain' which features the excavations at Yewden villa in the first episode.

WW1: Finding the Lost Battalions

Just finished watching the very moving WW1: Finding the Lost Battalions…

In 2009, in an astonishing discovery, the bodies of 250 British and Australian World War I soldiers were found in unmarked graves near Fromelles in northern France. It’s the largest war grave to be found in Western Europe in modern times.

Channel 4 was granted exclusive access by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to document the exhumation of the soldiers’ remains and their subsequent burial in the new Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery – the first to be built in 50 years.

This film tells the story of how, over the course of a year, the bodies have been carefully exhumed and many of them identified via DNA matches with living relatives.

WWI: Finding the Lost Battalions features three British families who hope to discover whether their relatives are amongst the dead, and lay to rest family mysteries that have lasted almost a century.

Their relatives are men who went missing in action, but no confirmation of death could ever be given by the War Office. Two are from the sleepy Buckinghamshire village of The Lee, which gave most of its young men to the 2nd Bucks Battalion, whose story this film follows in particular detail.

Drawing on personal possessions found with the bodies, including a bible with handwritten annotations, a heart-shaped leather pouch and a return train ticket, as well as astonishing personal diaries and letters from the men who went missing, the film brings the horrifying truth of the Battle of Fromelles, and its impact on the subsequent generations, vividly to life.

The fighting took place at the same time as the Battle of the Somme, at the height of WWI. More than 1,500 British and 5,533 Australian soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner during 12 hours of carnage between 19 and 20 July 1916. The Allies failed to gain an inch of ground.

Keep an eye out for it on 4OD, it should be up soon and is definitely worth a look.

Museums and restitution...

For anyone who is not attending the ‘Museums and Restitution‘ conference at the University of Manchester, but is interested in following the proceedings, then good news! The Institute of Cultural Practices will be blogging from the conference and updates will also be posted to Twitter, with the hashtag #mrest.

Results of Avebury consultation are announced...

Image: Odinist Press Service

After consideration of evidence and extensive consultation, English Heritage have decided that the prehistoric human remains in the Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, should be kept in the museum for the benefit of public access and understanding.

These Neolithic human remains were excavated in the Avebury area by Alexander Keiller between 1929 and 1935. In 2006, Paul Davies of the Council of British Druid Orders requested their reburial. English Heritage and the National Trust followed the recently-published DCMS process in considering this request, and went out to public consultation in 2009 on a draft report which set out the evidence and different options.

English Heritage and the National Trust have now published a report on the results of this consultation, and a second report on the results of a public opinion survey. Our summary report concludes that the request should be refused for four main reasons:

The benefit to future understanding likely to result from not reburying the remains far outweighs the harm likely to result from not reburying them;

It does not meet the criteria set out by the DCMS for considering such requests;

Not reburying the remains is the more reversible option;

The public generally support the retention of prehistoric human remains in museums, and their inclusion in museum displays to increase understanding.

David Thackray, Head of Archaeology, National Trust

Sebastian Payne , Chief Scientist, English Heritage

See here for further details and here for an informative and enlightening discussion about the Pagan perspective…

Death on display...

Image: ABC News

Interesting news story on the BBC website about the iconic plaster casts of Pompeii which are the subject of a new exhibition and raising all sorts of questions about ‘dark tourism’ and the notion of the ‘real thing’…

Re-wrapping the Anonymous Man...