Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human remains as curios have a long history. Following recent revelations about and arrests for trading in donated individuals’ remains from medical institutions, the archaeological component of the human remains trade is again under scrutiny. Scholars have researched isolated aspects of this illicit trade, often focusing on Indigenous remains, case studies, and broad issues of the commodification of these items. This symposium gathers diverse perspectives on these issues that analyze and contextualize this trade, reviewing existing and proposed new means for monitoring and stemming the human remains market, particularly relating to elements derived from archaeological and cemetery contexts. Individual presentations include ethical considerations of the human remains marketplace; analytical examinations of various human remains markets; grappling with anthropology’s own troubled past with regard to human remains; fitting traded remains into a biohistorical narrative; identifying and consulting descendant communities regarding proper treatment and disposition of remains; and fitting the marketplace within legal schemes to ensure that enforcement occurs. Discussions of these efforts among the broader changes occurring in anthropology and bioarchaeology, the trafficking of human remains is again ripe for consideration to ensure that enough protection of these remains exist and that their humanity does not get lost during commodification.