The Illicit Sale of Human Skeletal Remains in Washington State: Where the Law Stands Now and Insights for Future Protections

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.

Washington State has one of the most progressive sets of laws in the United States governing jurisdiction and process surrounding the discovery and investigation of human skeletal remains. The law dictates how human skeletal remains—both forensic and archaeological/historic—are handled, and by whom, from discovery to disposition. One substantial gap in the law is the sale within the state of human skeletal remains. Because the initial jurisdiction falls to the individual counties, the lack of an explicit law necessitating their investigation has resulted in mixed application of the existing law. Here, we present case studies from Washington that illustrate these types of occurrences, how individual counties have handled them, present legal arguments under the existing law requiring their investigation, and suggest more explicit changes to the existing law to clarify the issue. Through this research we hope to illuminate this problem and bring it to the attention of the archaeological community as well as lawmakers who may have similar gaps in their state laws.

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37878.0