Perspectives on human remains

In the early 20th century, Aleš Hrdlička, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, travelled widely across the US collecting skeletal remains, brains and other body parts.

He was the driving force behind the world-renowned physical anthropology collections in what was then known as the US National Museum, which eventually grew to hold around 31,000 remains.

Most of these came from marginalised and vulnerable populations, with a particular focus on people of colour or Indigenous origin.

Hrdlička’s acquisition methods amounted to “industrial pillaging”, an exposé in the Washington Post said last year.

On Kodiak Island in Alaska, he exhumed the graves of around 1,000 Alutiiq people and shipped their remains back to the museum, while in Mexico, he cut heads off the bodies of Indigenous people who had been massacred by the government.

Other remains were obtained from graveyards, battlefields, morgues and hospitals, the vast majority without the consent of the deceased or their families.

Once a celebrated anthropologist, Hrdlička is today acknowledged as a white supremacist and eugenicist; the remains he amassed – particularly his 280-strong “racial brain collection” – were used to try to prove, among other long-debunked racist theories, that white Europeans had larger brains than people of colour.

Hrdlička bequeathed a macabre and disturbing legacy to what is now the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. But for many years – aside from internal museum sector discussions – his theories and collecting practices stayed under the radar.

Recently, however, public awareness, and in many cases, anger, has grown with regard to colonial-era and other contested museum collections.

Under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, federally funded US museums are required to create inventories and make proactive efforts to return the Native American remains they hold to descendants or communities of origin.

However, some museums have been accused of dragging their heels and being unnecessarily obstructive, leading to the act being amended and strengthened last year.

In a Washington Post article from August 2023, several former employees accused the Smithsonian of actively resisting taking action on human remains.

Evidence of racism

Questions are also being asked about the extent of remains from Black populations that are held in US collections, which are not covered by current legislation.

Following the increased media attention, several institutions have pulled all human remains from public display, including prehistoric remains.

Apologising for the “pain caused by Hrdlička and others at the institution who acted unethically in the name of science”, Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch put together a Human Remains Taskforce to formulate a new policy, and in February this year it published a set of ethical recommendations based around an “informed consent” model.

The recommendations are likely to influence the care of remains in museums worldwide (see box).

A rethink at the Smithsonian

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Remains Taskforce published a set of recommendations to address the future of all human remains held in its collections.

The recommendations, which are likely to be adopted as official policy, outline an ambition to repatriate all of the Native American human remains in the institution’s collections by 2030.

A separate group will be set up to work on non-native remains, following the same process of identifying descendants or their communities, and repatriating where possible.

The institution will also introduce an informed consent approach to both research and display: this will no longer happen without the documented and informed consent of the deceased or, in appropriate circumstances, their descendants or descendant communities.

The institution has removed all human remains from display, including prehistoric remains.

“The primary recommendation is that it’s up to the descendant communities what we ultimately do with the remains, it’s not up to us,” says Ellen Stofan, the Smithsonian’s under-secretary for science and research.

“The concept of consent was certainly not around in the 1920s, or even in the 1940s – it’s quite a modern concept. Nevertheless, ethically, we feel that needs to be the guiding principle.”

Stofan says attitudes to repatriation within the museum have changed.“I’ll be honest with you, when the [repatriation] process started, there were people at the Smithsonian who were not totally on board with the idea – those people are all gone. Our team now is dedicated to speeding up that process.”

The task force recommendations reflect huge changes in the fields of cultural and forensic anthropology, Stofan says. “There’s now an enormous amount of literature of that field examining itself and saying, what are the ethics of what we do? How do we move forward as a field?

“I think what you see at the Smithsonian is typical of museums around the world, of these fields of anthropology. The field had, frankly, a fairly colonial attitude of ‘we’re expanding science, we’re understanding people, we’re understanding humanity and this is an important thing to do’, without thinking ‘this is a human, not a specimen’.”

She is clear, however, that by changing its policies on research and display, the institution is not trying to erase its own history. “We should never forget that this happened. We should never not admit that this happened,” she says.

In comparison with the heated debate in the US, this issue has been more settled in the UK in recent years.

The Human Tissue Act in 2004 (followed by the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act in 2006), along with non-statutory guidance from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gave museums a clear framework for the ethical care and treatment of human remains, as well as allowing national museums to deaccession remains for repatriation.

But growing urgency over addressing the legacies of empire in museums, along with changing sensibilities regarding the display of human tissue, are bringing the issue to greater prominence.

As the professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, Tom Gillingwater cares for the institution’s large collection of historic remains, including around 1,500 skulls, mostly acquired during the colonial era of the 1800s and early 1900s.

“It’s a collection that is remarkable and unique, but also challenging,” he says. The university has a long history of repatriating remains. Most recently it returned the skulls of four 19th-century warriors to their descendant community in Taiwan.

This work has become more difficult to navigate in recent years, says Gillingwater. “We are in a more fractured, perhaps sensationalist world,” he says.

“There are a lot of strong opinions held – often rightly – but navigating this environment is becoming more and more difficult for those of us that work in these sensitive areas.”

Because of the often-private, sensitive nature of discussions around repatriation, misconceptions are common – most often that the university is withholding remains or not doing enough to take action.

“An awful lot of what we do is not in the public domain, and that’s because the communities we work with externally ask for that,” Gillingwater says.

There have been times when the university has been accused of not reaching out to certain groups, when in fact it has built strong links with them behind the scenes.

“I have had to keep almost all of what we have done in this area private, so I can hardly moan when people make the wrong assumptions,” he says.

“People say ‘you’ve never repatriated to this group, or this group has been dealt a bad deal’. Often I see these things and I think ‘if only you knew that we do have very strong links to that community, we have dialogue with them, maybe we’ve already repatriated to them’. But by default, I can’t just go out there and say ‘you’re wrong’.”

He adds: “One thing I’ve found, which perhaps flies in the face of what you read in the public discourse about this, is not all groups want repatriation. There are lots of groups who, when they find out what is held here, find out how we care for them and find out what we’re doing with them, sometimes their response is, ‘well, that’s where they belong’.”

Time-consuming and complicated

Another misconception is that the university can “simply pack everything into boxes and send it out”, he says.

Repatriation of remains requires resources and time on both sides, and the process can take up to five years. Nor is it always obvious where the remains should go; competing claims and local politics can complicate matters.

“Every group we work with has different cultural, spiritual, religious requirements and expectations, and the onus is on us to meet those. And that’s not something that we can do quickly,” says Gillingwater.

“It takes time, and putting everything in place and making sure that everyone is happy and, more importantly, everyone feels that it’s being done right.”

On the other side of the discourse, there are accusations that the university is “giving everything away”. But Gillingwater, and others working in this area, are clear about the value it brings to both parties.

“It’s a two-way process – we get so much back from it,” he says. “New friendships, new links to communities, shared understanding, mutual interests. This isn’t a transaction of loss or gain, or a battle for rights, as it is often portrayed. This is a human event, which has a significant cultural, spiritual, religious element that enriches both sides.”

The human remains debate is often framed as a clash between coldly rational scientists and those for whom human remains hold a deeper spiritual meaning: put simply, whether the body of the deceased should be viewed as a specimen or as an ancestor.

However, like Gillingwater, many others who work in this area believe that this is a false dichotomy.

“This whole idea that there’s a world that is rational and a world that’s emotional has been disproven,” says Laura Van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is developing a new human remains policy.

She points out that medicine is a good example of a scientific sector that has developed ethical policies to acknowledge and respect belief and spirituality.

“Why should that be different for historical human remains collections?” she asks.

The unique scientific/spiritual nature of human remains collections does mean, however, that one of the most divisive areas of the debate is the question of public display.

Most scientists argue that, along with the research value of historic human remains, it is important for the public to be able to view the real human body.

Gillingwater, who also oversees the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomy Museum, says a “well-curated, sensitively presented, professionally cared for collection” can have a powerful impact.

“If we’re inspiring the next generation of doctors, scientists, great,” says Gillingwater.

“If it means that people understand their own body a bit better, fantastic. If it helps people with some kind of spiritual element of understanding themselves, great. I’m agnostic as to what people get out of it. But it’s clear a lot of people do get a lot out of it.”

However, there are difficult ethical issues at play. Some feel that displays of remains are ghoulish and only appeal to visitors’ morbid curiosity, or that exhibiting body parts featuring physical difference can have an othering, “freak show” effect. Others say it can be moving and powerful to see real-life examples of bodies like theirs.

As reflected in the Smithsonian policy, there is also deep unease over the fact that most of the human tissue in museums was collected long before the modern concept of informed consent, often from marginalised or persecuted communities.

The high-profile case of the 18th-century “Irish giant” Charles Byrne, who lived with acromegaly and gigantism, exemplifies some of these ethical questions.

Byrne sought to be buried at sea so that his body would not be acquired by scientists. However, on his death his remains were sold to the anatomist John Hunter and subsequently displayed at London’s Hunterian Museum for more than 200 years.

Following the museum’s refurbishment last year, Byrne's skeleton was taken off display, but is still available for research purposes.

Many strongly believe that Byrne should be buried according to his expressed wishes. Others – including Byrne’s own descendants – feel that his skeleton is vital for understanding his rare condition.

Medical research is an ongoing process, scientists argue, and the benefits to the living and future generations should take priority over the wishes of the dead.

Public distaste

The Pitt Rivers has been taking an informed consent approach to display for some years, says Van Broekhoven.

In 2020, following an ethical review, the museum removed all human remains from its exhibition floor, including some of its most popular exhibits, the Tsantas, or shrunken heads, collected from the Shuar and Achuar peoples of South America. Since then, some remains have returned to the exhibition floor.

“We try to not put things on display where we’ve not had consultation with the community,” says Van Broekhoven. “For example, there are some Tibetan human remains that have gone back on display, because we’ve worked extensively with the community and they were happy for them to go back out.”

The debate about display extends to what the museum shows online, says Van Broekhoven.

“There was a time where we said we’ll only put online what we explicitly have been told [we can] by the communities, because otherwise we might be offending them without knowing,” she says.

“On the other hand, many communities also say, ‘we want them to be online because how do we know that you have them’, so there’s a balance to be struck.”

The museum's new approach has emerged from its radical shift towards a “co-custodianship model” for working with communities of origin.

In the past five years it has undertaken several open-ended, Indigenous-led projects to enable communities of origin to connect with relevant items in the museum’s collection and make decisions regarding their care, display and possible return.

The museum is undertaking such a project with the Naga people of northeastern India, which will include the repatriation of ancestral remains. The project demonstrates the complex questions that this process can raise for communities, says Van Broekhoven.

“Lots of [Naga] communities are Christian now, so this has confronted them with a lot of questions,” she says.

“What some have said is ‘now we know they’re there, we know they’re restless and they need to come back. But what kind of rituals would we do because now we’re Christian, and these are pre-Christian’.

“It has become much bigger than the repatriation of human remains. It’s become a project that is held and led by the needs of the community,” adds Van Broekhoven. “It’s leading to incredible conversations that wouldn’t have been had otherwise.”

While much of the debate focuses on human remains acquired from overseas, there are some who believe that museums must reconsider how they treat the remains in their care that originate in the UK, most of which are ancient and were acquired during archaeological excavations.

The advocacy group Honouring Our Ancient Dead campaigns for museums to view such remains as the ancestors of our modern-day population and treat them with greater respect and dignity. It urges museums to re-inter remains where possible rather than keeping them on display or in store.

The group has created a database, Your Local Museum, which lists the museums in the UK that hold human tissue and their disposal policies. Founder Emma Restall Orr says that when the database first launched in 2008, many museums were not interested in participating, but attitudes have changed significantly since then.

“Probably 15 or 20 years ago, we felt a little bit like a threat. But now museums are starting to listen to us a bit more in terms of what we’re doing.”

People working in the field refer to the “wet dead” and “dry dead” – or those who passed within the last 100 years and those who died before. Human Tissue Act regulations, which cover areas such as storage conditions and the question of consent, only apply to the "wet dead", tissue that is less than 100 years old, which Restall Orr feels is an arbitrary boundary.

She believes the centenary of the first world war – and the not so far off centenary of the second world war – will highlight the contradictions of the current approach.

“The first world war has now slipped out of the Human Tissue Act, which in some ways means it’s fine to dig up the great grandfathers who died in the war,” she says. “Well, no. We know we shouldn’t be going through the first world war battlegrounds and digging people up.”

A holistic view

There is certainly greater recognition now among the scientific community of the highly sensitive nature of human remains, and an acknowledgement of the hurt caused by the unjust and often repugnant practices of the past.

However, there is also concern that changes in approach should not tip the scales too far away from science. For many in the field, the potential benefits to humanity justify excavating archaeological remains or keeping historic human tissue in collections.

“People always think it’s [about] balancing the interests of the living over a perceived concern of respect for the dead,” says Martin Smith, associate professor of biological anthropology at Bournemouth University.

“But there’s a third group that tends to be left out of the debate, and that is people who are not yet born. Do we have the right to destroy collections and deny future generations the chance to learn from them?”

With huge advances in science, Smith believes there has already been a significant shift in how those working in the field view human remains – not as specimens but more as a crucial biographical source that offers a powerful insight into humanity.

“We see the body as the biography of the person, of their personal self,” he says.

On the question of display, Smith believes a blanket ban on all human tissue would deny the public an opportunity to engage with the people of the past, rendering remains as “research materials to be accessed only by a scientific elite”.

Given the diversity of belief and strength of feeling around human remains, it’s unlikely the debate about their position in museum collections will ever be settled. But Smith believes the opposing sides have more in common than is acknowledged.

“The reason people have usually gone into [the field of bioarchaeology] is because they’re deeply interested in the human experience and respecting past lives and wanting to tell their stories,” he says.

“The people coming at this from a different direction also care a great deal about the past. There are an awful lot of people who don’t care about the past, so if we’re going to say this is about two sides, you could argue we’re on the same side.”

Changing ethics in bioarchaeology

A relatively young discipline, bioarchaeology has become one of the heritage sector’s most important sources of information about the past, rewriting long-held assumptions about the lives of our ancestors. But are the technological advances in this rapidly evolving field outpacing the ethics?

“We can do things that were impossible 10 or 15 years ago and these analyses are starting to drive archaeological questions
in general,” says Martin Smith of the University of Bournemouth. “There are some new ethical questions that have been opened up.”

There is a divergence of views when it comes to how these new tools should be used, particularly in the study of sensitive areas such as race. The Smithsonian is one institution that has banned all future research on remains involving racial identification based on physical features.

Then there is the question of what should become of the huge data-sets of ancient DNA that are being amassed. “There’s a big trend in science for all data to be open access, but what happens to open-access DNA datasets?” asks Smith. “What happens if individuals can be identified within them? Should the data be made available to anybody? And what purposes might it be put to in future?”

Increasingly, known individuals, such as high-status people or those who committed crimes, are being identified in archaeological samples. This raises questions about the ethics of publishing new details about their life or creating 3D representations of them.

“I suppose you could say a nice problem to have in that the subject is has undergone all these advances – but it’s advancing more quickly than then we can keep up with in terms of trying to trying to establish the ethics,” says Smith.