Skeletons in the Closet: Ethical, Moral, Pedagogical, and Intellectual Issues in Managing Unprovenanced Osteological Legacy Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Legacy collections of human remains at teaching institutions present a unique set of ethical issues. They frequently are the result of decades of unknown sourcing. Even when purchased from medical supply companies, ethical standards over time shift, raising new issues. Hidden away, many institutions know that they hold these collections, yet they may not be aware of the extent, condition, or origins of the individuals. In recent decades, there has been a push to account for, rehumanize, and repatriate legacy collections. But challenges of where to begin can be daunting. Here we detail our process at Southern Methodist University. With the ultimate goal of restoring dignity and identity to these individuals, we outline our protocols for inventorying, re-cataloguing, and analysis, during which we record age, estimated skeletal sex, population affinity, stature, and potential traumas and pathologies. The creation and utilization of the standard of practice (SOP) outlined here can be applied to human osteological legacy collections at university, museum, and medical institutions. The ethical management of these collections requires that we provide these decedents with the dignity and respect that they were never originally afforded.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37253.0