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.

Skeletons do pin-up...

Images: Style Noir

Medical imaging firm EIZO decided to make their own version of the infamous Pirelli calendar for 2010 as a marketing give-away, highlighting their expertise in the field.With 12 images of naked women literally baring all, what do you think of the end result? As an ardent admirer of the pin-up aesthetic and obviously, a self-confessed fan of the, er, skeleton, I can't help feeling that this just verges on the ever-so-slighty creepy...

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

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.