Conceptualizing Consent: The Influence of Legal Language on Postmortem Agency

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Across institutions nationally, willed-body (or cadaver donation) programs use language that, although often vague, typically provides some level of detail regarding what exactly donors are consenting to. This poster assesses use and recovery of the collected body in anthropological contexts, framed using the language of modern body donation. In reviewing a sample of willed-body programs, the authors found that 83 of 91 (91%) include language reflecting consent for education and 75 (82%) include language reflecting consent for research. When donating to these programs, education and research use are what the public generally understands they are providing consent for; however, it is still added explicitly to the language of these documents. This poster emphasizes differences in consent requirements between willed-body programs and archaeological collections of human remains. For example, many archaeological collections are used in teaching contexts - similar to modern willed bodies - but these largely require no manner of consent. The differential treatment of contemporary donated bodies and archaeological teaching and research collections will be the primary focus of this presentation, highlighting patterns and disparities in legal language from sources such as statutes and consent agreements.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40064.0