Consent, Curiosity, and Compassion: Bioethics and the Excavation of Archival Bodies

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Bioarchaeological researchers have increasingly looked to the archives to contextualize skeletal studies, opening exciting avenues of collaborative research. Biocultural anthropological research may not always prioritize skeletons as the primary source of body data, but instead draw upon bodies in archival materials such as hospital admittance records, seafaring crew agreements, arrest reports, and newspaper clippings. Further, skeletal and archival datasets may speak in concert, uncovering intimate aspects of individuals’ life and deathways. In this paper I will provide an overview of my ongoing research concerning archival bodies, exploring English hospital inpatients of the long eighteenth century, 19th-century seafarers and sex workers, and records associated with 20th-century named anatomical collections. As archives increasingly become the site of biological anthropological research, bioethical issues surrounding consent must be problematized. I will consider the powerful role of the researcher, the question of compassion, and how bioethical principles extend to historical individuals.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow