Building the Middle-Ground Archive: A Resource for Navigating Burial Laws, Regulations, and Guidance

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In early 2017 a human skull was left outside the front door of the Blackwater Draw Museum in Portales, New Mexico. No one saw it arrive; it was simply there when the museum opened that morning. Facilities that curate or display archaeological materials encounter situations such as this more frequently than one might expect, and often it is hard to locate guidance on how to properly curate, repatriate, or otherwise care for these materials when legal custody or ownership is difficult to determine. This project evolved out of a need to centralize and make available information about laws, regulations, and other forms of guidance related to human remains in archaeology, especially as they pertain to repositories. While repositories are often on their own to create best practices for their collections, there are legal requirements they must also address. Federal laws like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act are well-known, but local and state laws can be overlooked, as can guidance produced for tribal lands. This project builds on an existing foundation to produce an online archive of resources in an effort to eliminate these potential ethical quandaries for repositories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33315