Bioarchaeological Ethics and Considerations for the Deceased

Author(s): Jayne-Leigh Thomas; Krystiana Krupa

Year: 2019

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The last few decades have brought changes to archaeology through the establishment of ethics codes, repatriation, and community-based, participatory research. However, established ethical codes are often unfamiliar to researchers and the treatment of human remains continues to be unequal, while scientific justifications for doing bioarchaeological research are still being made. To avoid receiving feedback from local communities or asking permission to do research, many scientists are simply moving their projects to areas where permission is not required and reburial isn’t mandated. This not only avoids implementing ethical guidelines and sets a poor example for young professionals and graduate students, but shows blatant disregard for the deceased, their descendants, and the interests of the local community. Temporal or geographic context should not dictate the ethics employed by the researcher, and based on previous efforts of advocacy and international ethics policies we suggest six levels of consideration for scientists intending to develop bioarchaeological research projects.

Cite this Record

Bioarchaeological Ethics and Considerations for the Deceased. Jayne-Leigh Thomas, Krystiana Krupa. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 449480)

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Abstract Id(s): 22854