What Happens in the Ivory Tower: The Academic Trade of Archaeological Human Remains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While much of the recent discussion around the trafficking and illicit trade of human remains focuses on the black market and sales utilizing sites such as eBay or various social media platforms, we examine the historical practice of sending (or trading) human remains within academia. Historically, scholars from academic institutions throughout North America were well-known for moving partial or complete collections of human remains between institutions for use in comparative collections or to facilitate specialized analyses. Such trades or loans were often based on what are widely described as “handshake agreements,” where no paperwork exists to document these transfers. Through this “sharing of resources,” human remains were often separated from important contextual information, as well as associated cultural materials and human remains. In this paper, we describe the historical practice of undocumented collections transfers between faculty and institutions and explore the ethical ramifications, including complications for curation, research, and repatriation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Human Remains in the Marketplace and Beyond: Myths and Realities of Monitoring, Grappling With, and Anthropologizing the Illicit Trade in a Post-Harvard World

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39474.0