Taphonomy and the Death Course: Materializing Value in an Anatomical Collection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Huntington Anatomical Collection, part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History biological anthropology collections, is comprised of just over 3,000 individuals, about 50% of whom were foreign-born immigrants. They died in New York City public institutions between 1893 and 1921 and were dissected by Professor Huntington and his students. I consider the “death course” of Irish immigrants in the collection and trace how their movements—from public institutions to dissection tables and storage rooms—materially altered the remains. Such taphonomy includes the addition of paper, ink, and metal, as well as the formation of silences and erasures, like the loss of names, the fragmentation of bone, and loss of elements. These death course taphonomies might be read in relation to value. Their bodies were variously (de)valued as indebted laborers in need of care and later as currency to repay so-called debts to society. As specimens, their research value was enmeshed in early twentieth-century concerns for race science, eugenics, and immigration policy, and in later methods-oriented research in forensic anthropology and osteology. These various notions of value left material marks on the remains and shape the ethical terrain of researchers’ ongoing engagements with the collection.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38770.0