Secondary Burial on the Shelf: A New Approach to the Care of the Dead in Museums

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This study examines the care of the dead in museums at a newly imagined intersection of death work and curation. Recent concerns surrounding the ethics of human remains collections have resulted in many museums reevaluating their policies on access, display, and research of human remains and burial objects. However, these often reactionary projects are still aligned with the standardized collection practices that are firmly rooted in the colonial ontology which birthed the modern museum. Can interment in a museum be viewed as a part of the deceased’s mortuary journey? This question prompts examination into what separates museum practitioners who care for the dead from “death workers”: people who work with the dead and dying such as morticians, funeral directors, and death doulas. If there is no separation and museum practitioners can be included under the umbrella of death workers then the care of the dead in museums and interpretations of their mortuary status have space to evolve to meet the growing challenges of ethical stewardship. This study establishes new case studies of museums in the United States to understand the potential and limitations of this new approach to the stewardship of the dead.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53673