scholarly journals International Repatriations of Indigenous Human Remains and Its Complexities: the Australian Experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Paul Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
Australian Government ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Australian Experience ◽  
Historical Legacies ◽  
Policies And Practices

In this article, I discuss how returns of Ancestral Remains of Indigenous Australian communities from overseas museums and other scientific institutions since the early 1990s have occurred in the context of changing Australian government repatriation policies and practices. The article then highlights how the past three decades have seen numerous instances of the return of Ancestral Remains to their community proving difficult and stressful because of the loss of ancestral lands, life-ways and the experience of colonial subjugation. As I explain, returning the dead has challenged the living by requiring them to address questions of authority, power and historical legacies of colonialism, notably in the case of those communities seeking the restoration of ownership of their ancestral country within the framework of Australia’s current national and state land laws.

To Gaze Upon the Dead: The Exhibition of Human Remains as Cultural Practice and Political Process in Scandinavia and the USA

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liv Nilsson Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Small Hand ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Dead

The clattering sound of a child’s shoes across the cold stone floors; the echo is magnificent. I am nine or ten years old and I make my way through the prehistoric exhibition at the National Museum in Copenhagen. The dimly lit display cases are filled with arrowheads, heavy beads of perforated amber, funnel beakers, and bronze artefacts. I reach my goal, the alluring Bronze Age oak cists where the buried men and women from the heaths of Jutland are looking back at me. I touch the glass. My eyes wander over their reddened hair and their clothes, stained in deep shades of peat brown. My eyes seek theirs in the hollow orbits of their skulls. I close mine and imagine a life thousands of years ago. My small hand moves across the glass, leaving an almost invisible trace. Small fingerprints; a dreaming child’s gesture. I would stay there forever, dreaming of the past. Feeling it. I know that it was moments like this, when I could see and feel the humanity of the past that made me want to become an archaeologist. The immediate encounter with an individual from the past is a privileged moment. For a brief moment our destinies cross paths, and hundreds, even thousands of years are transcended. Scenes like this one, of children gazing at the dead and seeing the past, are not unusual. In museums across Europe, the archaeological findings from burials, including both the human remains and the items that accompanied the dead, are often displayed with pride and confidence. The public expects this and is drawn in with fascination to stand face-to-face with the deep past. Beyond this, the display of the dead and of death itself, with all of the allure and drama that accompany it, becomes a privileged locus for pedagogy and communication. But while this confident attitude towards the display of the dead may be typical in Europe, it is not as evident in North America. In North American museums, it is rare to see human remains from archaeological contexts displayed in any form (exception seems to be given to Egyptian mummies, which still are prominently displayed by many institutions that have them among their collections).

The Useful Dead: Bodies as Objects in Iron Age and Norse Atlantic Scotland

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Shapland ◽  
Ian Armit
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Early Historic

This paper discusses a group of modified human remains from Iron Age and Norse sites in Atlantic Scotland, several of which have been discovered or rediscovered over the past decade, and all of which have recently been radiocarbon dated. It investigates the ways in which these remains seem to have been recovered, used, modified and deposited by living communities, and what this may reveal about past attitudes towards the bodies of the dead. These practices are placed within a wider European later prehistoric and early historic context, to highlight how this group of evidence may add to current debates surrounding social memory, the ritualization of domestic life, and the place of the dead within the world of the living.

scholarly journals “I Like to Keep my Archaeology Dead”. Alienation and Othering of the Past as an Ethical Problem

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Stefan Schreiber ◽  
Sabine Neumann ◽  
Vera Egbers
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Human Bone ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Bone Material ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Dead

As archaeologists, we have to deal with the dead, and as David Clarke once said, we like to keep our archaeology dead. From an epistemological perspective, alienation from the dead seems almost inevitable; otherwise, we would only project today’s conditions onto the past. Therefore, the past must be, and must remain, a foreign country. These alienating processes have ethical implications, however, especially when it comes to the study of human remains. In this article, we analyze the structures within the scientific discipline of archaeology that normalize practices, such as the labeling of human bone material during excavations and the object-like display of skeletons in museums. We argue that archaeologists have an – often rejected – ethical responsibility towards subjects from the past. We, therefore, seek to open up a debate concerning alternative strategies for the treatment of the dead.

Talk like an Egyptian? Epistemological problems with the synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of Nesyamun and racial designations in mummy studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Uroš Matić
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
General State ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Egyptian Mummy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media

AbstractThe paper examines epistemological problems behind a recent study claiming to provide a synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of a man named Nesyamun and behind racial designations in Egyptian mummy studies more generally. So far, responses in the media and academia concentrated on the ethical problems of these studies, whereas their theoretical and methodological backgrounds have been rarely addressed or mentioned only in passing. It seems that the media reaction has targeted the synthesis of a sound rather than other, equally problematic, assumptions found in Egyptian mummy studies. By focusing on the epistemological problems, it will be demonstrated that the issues of greatest concern are endemic to a general state of a considerable part of the discipline of Egyptology and its unreflective engagement with the material remains of the past, especially human remains.

scholarly journals The elusive parasite: comparing macroscopic, immunological, and genomic approaches to identifying malaria in human skeletal remains from Sayala, Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvie Loufouma Mbouaka ◽  
Michelle Gamble ◽  
Christina Wurst ◽  
Heidi Yoko Jäger ◽  
Frank Maixner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Rapid Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Pathological Changes ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site ◽  
Capture Sequencing

AbstractAlthough malaria is one of the oldest and most widely distributed diseases affecting humans, identifying and characterizing its presence in ancient human remains continue to challenge researchers. We attempted to establish a reliable approach to detecting malaria in human skeletons using multiple avenues of analysis: macroscopic observations, rapid diagnostic tests, and shotgun-capture sequencing techniques, to identify pathological changes, Plasmodium antigens, and Plasmodium DNA, respectively. Bone and tooth samples from ten individuals who displayed skeletal lesions associated with anaemia, from a site in southern Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD), were selected. Plasmodium antigens were detected in five of the ten bone samples, and traces of Plasmodium aDNA were detected in six of the twenty bone and tooth samples. There was relatively good synchronicity between the biomolecular findings, despite not being able to authenticate the results. This study highlights the complexity and limitations in the conclusive identification of the Plasmodium parasite in ancient human skeletons. Limitations regarding antigen and aDNA preservation and the importance of sample selection are at the forefront of the search for malaria in the past. We confirm that, currently, palaeopathological changes such as cribra orbitalia are not enough to be certain of the presence of malaria. While biomolecular methods are likely the best chance for conclusive identification, we were unable to obtain results which correspond to the current authentication criteria of biomolecules. This study represents an important contribution in the refinement of biomolecular techniques used; also, it raises new insight regarding the consistency of combining several approaches in the identification of malaria in past populations.

scholarly journals The Old Greeks

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
George Kouvaros
Keyword(s):  
Past History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Dead

In his final unfinished book on the writing of history, Siegfried Kracauer wonders about his increasing susceptibility to ‘the speechless plea of the dead’. ‘[T]he older one grows, the more he is bound to realize that his future is the future of the past—history.’ For the children of migrants, the question of how to speak well of the dead is distinguished by complex feelings of attachment and rejection, identification and denial that are expressed in a range of everyday interactions. ‘The Old Greeks’ examines the part played by photographic media in this process of memorialisation. It elaborates a series of propositions about the value of photographic media that are tested through a consideration of the events that surrounded the author’s first years in Australia.

scholarly journals Finding the dead: bodies, bones and burials from the 1845 Franklin northwest passage Expedition

Polar Record ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Stenton
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Northwest Passage ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Failed Attempt ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Back River

AbstractOn 22 April 1848, after three years in the Arctic, and 19 months spent ice-bound in northern Victoria Strait, the 105 surviving officers and crew of the Franklin Northwest Passage expedition deserted HMSErebusand HMSTerroras the first step of their escape plan. They assembled at a camp south of Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island and made the final preparations for the next step, a 400 km trek along the frozen seashores of King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula to the Back River. All of the men died before reaching their destination, and their remains have been found at 35 locations along the route of the retreat. These discoveries have played a central role in reenactments of events thought to have occurred during the failed attempt to reach the Back River and to the disastrous outcome of the expedition. This paper presents a summary of these findings and examines the criteria used to attribute them to the Franklin expedition. It is suggested that approximately one-third of the identifications have been based on information that is inadequate to confidently assign the human remains as those of Franklin expedition personnel.

Alessandro Gavazzi: a barnabite friar and the risorgimento (Presidential Address)

1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 303-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basil Hall
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Memento Mori ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Mind

Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Historians no doubt have problems enough without setting before themselves that ‘memento mori’ from Eliot, who, though he was describing an old man seeking to understand his own past, leaves nevertheless an echo in the mind disturbing to those who practise the historian’s craft. We assume a confidence which in our heart of hearts we do not always, or should not always, possess. Eliot’s words not only demonstrate the difficulty of one man understanding his own past, but also the historian’s difficulty in understanding those whom they select for questioning from among the vast multitudes of the silent dead, whose deeds, artifacts, ideas, passions, hopes and memories have died with them. We dig into the past, obtain data from archives, brush off the objects found, collect statistics, annotate, arrange, describe, establish a chronology – but do we effectively understand the dead, especially since we are affected by our own beliefs, customs and ideologies? We are, of course, all aware of this: we silently scorn the lecturer who raises these diffident hesitations. For we know our duty: we examine all that we can, we describe our findings, we annotate them, we draw conclusions, or leave our demonstrations to speak for themselves. There are reasons, as I shall hope to show, that these considerations – Eliot’s ominous words and our determination not to be disquieted by them – bear upon the subject of this paper, the almost forgotten Alessandro Gavazzi.

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