Over Their Dead Bodies: Underlying axioms and contemporary use and handling of human remains from institutional collections

Histori­cally human remains, and skulls in parti­cular, have been repeatedly used to construct argu­ments justifying raciali­zation and racism, confining people to fixed notions of iden­tities and legiti­mising violent sys­tems of exploitation and oppression. The hundreds of thousands of human remains amassed in numerous ‘collec­tions’ across the world constitute an ethi­cal and politi­cal challenge of reckoning with the vio­lent past, its lega­cies and conti­nuities. One central concern of contem­porary practice is the exami­nation of histories of the amassed mortal remains (i.e. prove­nance research) and their repa­triation. In most cases there is, how­ever, limited or no bio­graphical infor­mation available about concrete remains and the indi­viduals they belonged to, presenting a challenge of the basis upon which repatria­tions take place. Histo­rical and biolo­gical research methodo­logies provide the basis upon which human remains are ascribed as belonging to a parti­cular identity group, and returned to contem­porary represen­tatives of that group. This process is riddled with ethical, conceptual, methodo­logical and political issues that necessitate trans-dis­ciplinary scholarly attention. Some of the key issues which this group, in colla­boration with different stake­holders, critically examines include: reliance on scholarly and folk ethno-racial classi­fications in bio- anthro­pological ‘ancestry esti­mations’; conflation of biological popu­lation cate­gories with socio-cul­tural identities; ascription of socio-cul­tural group belonging based on scarce histo­rical infor­mation; reproduction of racialized ethnic and national cate­gories in political practice; and the ethics of con­tinuous storage and hand­ling of remains. The group ana­lyses these problems with particular emphasis on regional contexts, such as Southern Africa and Eastern Europe, ex­ploring the differences as well as dis­cussing the biases that exist in diffe­rential treatment of remains de­pending on their origin. This project aims to generate contri­butions for both scholarly debates, as well as provide a re­liable basis for future practice and colla­boration between diverse stake­holders.

This project is funded by the Con­structive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme of the Net­work of European Insti­tutes of Advanced Studies (NetIAS). The research group is com­prised of five members:

• Jonatan Kurzwelly (Socio-Cultural Anthro­pology; Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Germany)
• Joanna Karolina Malinowska (Philo­sophy of Science, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)
• Phila Msimang (Philo­sophy of Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa)
• Malin Wilckens (History, Leibniz Insti­tute for European History in Mainz, Germany)
• Paul Wolff Mitchell (Biological Anthro­pology and History, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Jonatan Kurzwelly is the Princi­pal Investi­gator of this research group.