Bioarchaeological Ethics: A Historical Perspective On The Value of Human Remains

CHAPTER 1
BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINS
PHILLIP L. WALKER
I NTRODUCTION range of value systems and religious beliefs

that are considered socially acceptable
The rapidity of technological and cultural increases, so does the probability of social
change in current times is forcing us to con- conflict. To deal with these issues, many sci-
front a myriad of moral dilemmas over issues entific associations are beginning to recon-
as wide ranging as the ethics of cloning hu- sider ethical principles that underlie their
mans, the ownership of our genetic material, research activities. The field of bioarchaeol-
and the rights of animals relative to those of ogy is especially problematic in this respect,
humans. These ethical issues concern the very positioned as it is between medicine, with its
nature of what it means to be human and our ethical focus on generating scientific knowl-
relationships, not only to other people, but also edge for use in helping individual patients,
to the plants and animals that sustain us. and anthropology, with its ethical principles
The enormous strides we have taken toward that stem from deep belief in the power of cul-
human equality during this century mean that tural relativism to overcome ethnocentrism
formerly disenfranchised and enslaved mem- and encourage tolerance.
bers of minority groups are beginning to gain It is in this context that skeletal biologists
power and control over their lives. In many are increasingly being forced to adapt their ac-
countries there has been a decline in the politi- tivities to the value systems of the descendants
cal dominance and moral authority of orga- of the people they study. Human skeletal re-
nized religions. Notions of multiculturalism mains are more than utilitarian objects of value
and a growing acceptance of the moral princi- for scientific research. For many people, they
ple of not discriminating against people based also are objects of religious veneration of great
on gender, ethnicity, or religious beliefs mean symbolic and cultural significance. Over the
that there is no longer a shared set of cultural past thirty years, formerly disenfranchised
values we can use for guidance in dealing with groups such as Native Americans and Aus-
moral issues (Cottingham, 1994). tralian Aborigines have increasingly been able
This increased tolerance of cultural diver- to assert their claims of moral authority to con-
sity poses ethical dilemmas because, as the trol the disposition of both the remains of their
ancestors and the land their ancestors occupied
(Howitt, 1998; Scott, 1996). This trend toward
Biological Anthropologv of the Human Skeleton, Edited by
M. Anne Katzenberg and Shelley R. Saunders. repatriating museum collections and granting
ISBN 0-471-31616-4 Copyright © 2000 by Wiley-Liss, Inc. land rights to indigenous people can only be
3
4 BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS
understood within a broader social and histori- Paleolithic period. Such practices suggest con-
cal context. tinued use of these items was anticipated in the
To provide this historical perspective, I will afterlife. Expressions of such beliefs can be
describe the evolution of religious beliefs about found in some of the earliest surviving reli-
the proper treatment of the dead and conflicts gious texts. The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
that have arisen over the centuries between for instance, provides spells and elaborate di-
these beliefs and the value scientists place on rections for use by the souls of the deceased
the empirical information that can be gained during their journeys in the land of the dead
through research on human remains. This is (Allen, 1960; Ellis N, 1996).
followed by a discussion of the generally ac- The belief that the soul persists in an after-
cepted ethical principles that are beginning to world has deep roots in Western religious tradi-
emerge in the field of bioarchaeology. Finally, tions. The ancient Greeks held elaborate
some practical suggestions are offered for deal- funeral rituals to help a dead person's soul find
ing with conflicts that arise when these ethical its way across the River Styx to a community
principles conflict with those of descendant of souls in the underworld. Once in the under-
groups. world, there was continued communion be-
tween the living and the dead. For example, the
soul of a dead person could be reborn in a new
THE HISTORY OF BELIEFS body if their living family members continued
ABOUTTHE DEAD to attend to their needs by bringing them honey
cakes and other special foods on ceremonial
Early in our evolutionary history people began occasions (Barber, 1988). By medieval times
to develop a keen interest in the remains of most people continued to view death as a semi-
their dead comrades. At first this was undoubt- permanent state in which the living and the
edly simply a response to the practical consid- spirit of the dead person could maintain contact
erations of removing the decaying remains of a with each other. Folktales about ghosts and
dead relative from one's domicile or preventing corpses coming to life were widespread and
scavengers from consuming the body. More contributed to the idea of the dead functioning
elaborate patterns of mortuary behavior soon in society with the living (Barber, 1988;
began to develop. Cut marks on the crania of Caciola, 1996). The issue of integrity of the
some of the earliest members of our species corpse and the relationship of this to the after-
show that as early as 600,000 years ago people life dominated medieval discussions of the
living at the Bodo site in Ethiopia were de- body: salvation became equated with whole-
fleshing the heads of the dead (White, 1986). It ness, and hell with decay and partition of the
has been suggested that such practices reflect a body (Bynum, 1995:114).
widespread belief among our ancestors con- After the Reformation, conservative Protes-
cerning the role of the brain in reproduction tant groups continued to emphasize the pro-
(La Barre, 1984). found significance of a person's physical
By 50,000 to 100,000 years ago mortuary remains after death. In fact, one of the more
practices had evolved into elaborate rituals that troublesome issues facing Protestant reformers
involved painting bodies with red ochre and in- after the abolition of purgatory in the early six-
cluding food or animal remains with the body teenth century was the need to provide a ratio-
as offerings. Through time these cultural prac- nal explanation for the status of body and soul
tices became associated with increasingly com- in the period intervening between death and
plex religious beliefs that helped people cope resurrection (Spellman, 1994). One strategy
with the uncertainties of death. Depositing util- for dealing with this vexing problem is pro-
itarian items and valuables such as ornaments vided by the constitution for the Old School
in graves became commonplace in the Upper Presbyterian Church, published in 1822, which
THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON HUMAN REMAINS 5
asserts that the bodies of deceased members of that characterized earlier societies in which
the church "even in death continue united in people were forced to confront the dead di-
Christ, and rest in the graves as in their beds, rectly on a daily basis has been replaced by
till at the last day they be again united with avoidance of the dead. With the commercial-
their souls ... the self same bodies of the dead i zation of the burial process by the "death-
which were laid in the grave, being then again care" industry in wealthy countries, traditions
raised up by the power of Christ" (Laderrnan, such as wakes and ritual preparation of the
1 996:54). dead For burial by family members have been
Such beliefs in the continuance of life after replaced by the processing of the dead in re-
death remain prevalent in modern Western so- mote settings (Badonc, 1987; Horn, 1998;
cieties (Cohen, 1992). Recent surveys show Rundblad, 1995). This cultural trend toward
that 25% oh European adults report having l ack of contact with the dead has greatly in-
contact with the dead (Haraldsson and Hout- creased the cultural gulf between a public that
kooper, 1991), and a significant number of has little familiarity with death and skeletal re-
Americans believe in reincarnation (Donahue, searchers, such as bioarchaeologists, who con-
1 993; Walter, 1993). About half of the people front the dead on a daily basis.
i n the United States believe that hell is a real
place in which people suffer eternal damna-
tion (Marty, 1997). In another survey, 80% of THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH
the North American population believes in ON HUMAN REMAINS
some kind of an afterlife (Goldhaber, 1996;
Tonne, 1996). Among Canadians, 4(1% be- Ambivalence toward scientific research on hu-
lieve in the Devil and 43% in hell (Belief in man remains has deep roots in Western soci-
the Devil, 1995). eties. From its onset, scientific research oil the
Surveys also show that, in spite of specula- dead has been the domain of physicians who
tion about the secularizing effects of education were often forced to work under clandestine
and academia, most highly educated people, conditions on the bodies of social outcasts. The
i ncluding professors and scientists, are about earliest recorded systematic dissections of a hu-
as religious as other Americans. Anthropolo- man body were conducted in the first half ofthe
gists are one oh the few groups that deviate third century B.C., by two Greeks, Herophilus oh
significantly from the majority view that indi- Chalcedon and Erasistratus of' Chios. These
vidual human beings continue to exist in some studies were performed in Alexandria, a city
kind of an afterlife. Compared to faculty in the where traditional Greek values were weakened
physical sciences, anthropologists are almost by Ptolcmic influences, and probably involved
t wice as likely to be irreligious, to never attend vivisection and the use of condernned criminals
church, and one in five actually declare them- (Von Staden, 1989: 52-53, 1992). In the ancient
selves "opposed" to religion (lannaccone et al., world, scientific research of this kind was ex-
1 998). This is significant in the context of the tremely problematic because it violated Greco-
ethical issues considered in this paper because Roman, Arabic, and early Judeo-Christian
it means that the values of the anthropologists beliefs about the afterlife, impurity, and pol-
who do skeletal research will often differ dra- l ution (Bynum, 1994; Fknoyan, 1994; Von
matically from those of descendants of the peo- Staden, 1992), In the Christian world, anatomi-
ple they study. cal studies of the dead were especially trouble-
Although the prevalence of conviction in an some because many people feared resurrection
afterlife appears to have changed relatively lit- would be impossible if their body had been dis-
tle during the twentieth century, the cultural sected. This belief derived from the conviction
context in which it occurs has been dramati- that at resurrection the actual body is recon-
cally transformed. The familiarity with death nected with the soul. People thus feared that
dissection would somehow interfere with this the incident led to controlling legislation in
process and leave the soul eternally wandering Britain.
around in search of lost parts (Bynum, 1994). Grave-robbing activities sometimes met
During the Renaissance the strength of reli- with violent public resistance. In 1788, for ex-
gious sanctions against dissection began to ample, New Yorkers rioted far three days after
weaken and, by the sixteenth century, surgeons some children peered through windows ol'thc
in Protestant countries such as England were Society of the Hospital of the City of New York
officially given the authority to take the bodies and discovered medical students dissecting hu-
of hanged criminals for use in their anatomical man cadavers, one of whom turned out to be
studies. This practice had the dual purpose of their recently deceased mother. A mob of five
furthering the healing arts and serving as a de- thousand eventually stormed the hospital and
terrcnt to criminals who feared the desecration the jail where several doctors had taken refuge.
of their bodies (I Iumphrey, 1973; Wilf, 1989). The militia had to be called in and finally dis-
The repugnance of being dissected was so persed the crowd by firing muskets into it.
great that riots sometimes erupted after execu- To avoid problems such as this, the profes-
tions over the disposition of the bodies. Samuel sional body snatchers hired by medical schools
Richardson observed one of these spectacles: concentrated on robbing the graves of the poor
"As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, and powerless. The cemeteries of almshouses
1 was much surprised, before such a number of were favorite targets and, in the United States,
peace-officers, to see the populace fall to haul- African-American graveyards were favored as
ing and pulling the carcasses with so much places to plunder. Upon visiting Baltimore in
earnestness, as to occasion several warm en- 1 835, Harriet Martincau commented that the
counters, and broken heads. These, I was told, bodies used for dissection were exclusively
were the friends of the person executed, or such those of African Americans "because the
as, for the sake of tumult, chose to appear so, whites do not like it, and the coloured people
and sonic persons sent by private surgeons to cannot resist" (Martincau, 1838:140).
obtain bodies for dissection. 'File contests be- Although much of the early anatomical re-
t ween these were fierce and bloody, and fright- search focused on resolving issues concerning
ful to look at" (Richardson, 1987). physiology and surgical anatomy, from the
As appreciation for the medical value of the beginning skeletal studies with a decidedly
i nformation that could be gained through dis- anthropological flavor were done to answer
section increased, so did the need for anatomi- questions related to human variation and adapta-
cal specimens. Soon the demand for bodies for tion. As early as 440 B.C., Herodotus (484- 425
use in teaching and research outstripped the le- B.C. ) reported on an investigation into the effect
gal supply of executed criminals, and physi- of the environment on the strength of the skull:
cians increasingly began to obtain cadavers
through robbing graves and hiring body- On the field where this battle was fought 1
snatchers who were referred to as "resurrec- saw a very wonderful thing which the natives
tionists" (Hutchens, 1997; Millican, 1992; pointed out to me. The bones of the slain tic
Schultz, 1992). This practice was widespread scattered upon the field in two lots, those of
the Persians in one place by themselves, as
and persisted well into the twentieth century in
the bodies lay at the first-those of the
some parts of the United States. The desire for
Egyptians in another place apart from them.
bodies even led to the series of infamous mur- If, then, you strike the Persian skulls, even
ders committed by William Burke and William with a pebble, they arc so weak, that you
Hare in Edinburgh in the 1820s, with the aim break a hole in them; but the Egyptian skulls
of supplying dissection subjects to Dr. Robert are so strong, that you may stnite them with a
Knox, the anatomist. Hare turned kings evi- stone and you will scarcely break them in.
dence, Burke was hanged for his crimes, and They gave me the following reason for this
THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON HUMAN REMAINS 7
difference, which seemed to me likely totle that humankind contained several species
enough: The Egyptians (they said) from early i ncluding "satyrs," "sphinges," and "pygmies,"
childhood have the head shaved, and so by the and in 1779 Charles Bonnet (1720--1793)
action of the sun the skull becomes thick and wrote a detailed account of the orangutan in
hard. (I lerodotus, 1990) which he noted a close relationship to us, albeit
with the "lowest races" of our species (Bonnet,
Much of the early anatomical work on hu- 1 779; Clutton-Brock, 1995; Tyson, 1966).
man variation had its roots in the belief' of After resolving the issue of whether humans
Aristotle and his contemporaries that Nature and apes are members of the same species,
was organized hierarchically as a continuous Enlightenment scholars were still laced with
chain. He was certain that all other animals ex- the problem of interpreting the previously un-
i sted for the sake of' Man. This view of the world suspected extent of human biological and cul-
provided a useful framework for comprehending tural diversity revealed by European colonial
the enormous complexity of the natural world expansion into remote areas of the world.
and also had the appeal of rationalizing the strat- Linnaeus, for example, recognized five divi-
ified nature of Greek society with powerful sions of our genus, which included "Homo
rulers and a social elite at the top and the slaves monstrosus," a catchall category for a variety
at the bottom (Clutton-Brock, 1995). of' mythical creatures reported by early explor-
By the Middle Ages this hierarchical view ers. The debate soon took on a strong religious
of the world had been transformed into the flavor and began to focus upon how the empir-
Christian doctrine in which the world was seen ical facts of human variation could be made
as a perfect expression of God's will that de- congruent with biblical accounts of Adarn and
scended in continuous succession through a Eve and the Tower of Babel. Interpretations of
"Great Chain of Being" from the perfection of human diversity became sharply divided be-
the creator to the dregs of things at. the very t ween the adherents of the theory of monogen-
bottom of creation. This perspective permeated e sis, which traced all humans to a single origin
much of the work of early natural historians i n the Garden of Eden, and the adherents of
such as John Ray, who developed the doctrine polygenesis, who rejected the criteria of inter-
of "natural theology," in which he argued that fertility as the basis for the identification of bi-
the power of God could be understood through ological species and took the unorthodox
the study of his creation, the natural world position that Europeans, Africans, Asians, and
(Ray, 1692). In this context, the description of Native Americans were derived from different
biological variation, including that found ancestral forms.
among humans, was a frankly religious activity By the end of the eighteenth century, evi-
i n which the exploration of the fabric of the dence obtained from human skeletal remains
natural world at both its macroscopic and mi- began to assume an increasingly important role
croscopic levels was seen as a way of revealing i n these debates over the origins and signifi-
the "divine architect's" plan for the universe. cance of human biological and cultural differ-
The expanded view of biological diversity ences. Cranial evidence (a total of 82 skulls),
provided by the specimens brought back by for instance, figured prominently in the famous
Columbus and other early European explorers doctoral thesis of Johann Friedrich Blumen-
stimulated a frenzy of species description and bach (1752-1940) in which he argued that
the first detailed anatomical studies of the dif- modern human diversity had arisen as a conse-
ferences between apes and humans. - through quence of the degeneration of a primordial type
his careful dissections of a chimpanzee, (varietas primigenia) whose closest living
Edward Tyson (1650-1708) was able to de- approximation could be found in the people of
bunk myths based on the reports of classical the Caucasus Mountains (Blumenbach et al.,
authors such as Homer, Herodotus, and Aris- 1 86-5). Such studies generated considerable
interest in human cranial variation, and soon idea that human variation can be adequately ac-
systematic efforts were begun to assemble re- commodated by a few fundamentally different
search collections of human skeletal material racial types, which conveniently coincides with
from throughout the world. beliefs in racial inferiority and superiority that
In the United States, research on population continue to persist in modern societies. The
differences in cranial morphology was domi- idea of a straightforward relationship between
nated by Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), the shape of a person's skull and their genetic
a physician from Philadelphia. Morton studied makeup also was seductive to physical anthro-
medicine at the University of Edinburgh where pologists because it meant that cranial differ-
he was influenced by theories of polygenism ences could be used as a powerful tool to
and the hereditarian views of phrenologists that further one of anthropology's principle goals:
were in vogue at the time (Spencer, 1983). producing detailed reconstructions of popula-
Underlying Morton's careful craniometric re- tion movements and historical relationships.
search was the basic theoretical assumption of Finally, there is a practical consideration behind
phrenology: differences in skull shape corre- the persistence of the typological orientation of
sponded to differences in the shape of the brain skeletal research. Until recently, the computa-
and consequent differences in brain function. tional problems of someone attempting to sta-
To test these theories, Morton amassed a large tistically compare quantitative observations
collection of human crania from all over the made on skeletal collections of any meaningful
world that he compared using cranial measure- size were practically insurmountable. The typo-
ments. From this he derived a hierarchy of logical approach, with all of its simplifying
racial types with blacks at the bottom, assumptions and loss of information on within-
American Indians intermediate, and whites at group heterogeneity, offered a cost-effective al-
the top (Morton, 1839). ternative to this practical dilemma.
Morton's craniometric approach to under- The last point is nicely illustrated by the an-
standing human variation set the stage for thropometric work of Franz Boas (1858-1942),
much of the osteological research done by the founder of American anthropology and a
physical anthropologists during the rest of the strong opponent of simplistic hereditarian in-
nineteenth century. Most of this work was ty- terpretations of human variation. Through his
pological in orientation and focused upon the anthropometric studies of Europeans who im-
classification of people into broad categories migrated to the United States, Boas showed
such as brachycephalic (round-headed) or that the shape of the cranial vault, a trait nine-
dolichocephalic (long-headed) based on ratios teenth-century racial typologists had fixated
of measurements. Although acceptance of the upon, is highly responsive to environmental in-
monogeneticists' theory that all humans trace fluences and thus of limited value in taxonomic
their ancestry to a single origin gradually in- analysis (Boas, 1912). Boas realized the poten-
creased, especially after the publication of tial of anthropometric research for elucidating
Darwin's theory of natural selection, a typolog- the cultural and biological history of our
ical, craniometrically oriented approach em- species and from 1888 to 1903 worked to as-
phasizing taxonomic description and definition semble anthropometric data on 15,000 Native
over functional interpretation persisted well Americans and 2,000 Siberians (Jantz et al.,
into the middle of the twentieth century in the 1992). In contrast to Hrdicka and many of his
work of influential skeletal biologists such as other contemporaries, Boas realized the neces-
Ales Hrdlicka (1869-1943) and Ernest Hooton sity of statistical analysis for understanding the
(1887-1954). variability within these samples. Unfortunately,
There are several reasons for the remarkable the computational capabilities of the data pro-
tenacity of the typological emphasis in research cessing tools that were available at the begin-
on human skeletal remains. First, there is the ning of the nineteenth century (i.e., pencil and
THE SOURCES OF SKELETAL COLLECTIONS 9
paper) made meaningful analysis of the infor- tal collections have been made throughout his-
mation on human variation contained within tory. The practice of collecting human skeletal
this monumental collection of anthropometric remains as war trophies and for religious pur-
observations impossible (Jantz, 1995). Con- poses has deep historical roots. It has been ar-
sequently, almost nothing was done with these gued that taking the heads of the dead to obtain
data until a few years ago when availability of their power is among the earliest of ritual prac-
computers with adequate data storage and pro- tices (La Barre, 1984). In the past, the taking of
cessing capability made their analysis possible heads, scalps, and other body parts during war-
(see Pietrusewsky, Chapter 14). fare was a widespread practice, especially
During the past thirty years, physical an- among Native Americans and Melanesians,
thropology has finally escaped from the and can nearly be considered a cultural univer-
methodological and conceptual shackles of sal (Driver, 1969; Hamer, 1972; Olsen and
nineteenth-century racial typology. Research on Shipman, 1994; Owsley et al., 1994; White and
the skeletal remains of earlier human popula- Toth, 1991; Willey and Emerson, 1993).
tions has entered a vibrant new phase in which Although suppressed in modern societies, such
the great potential Boas saw in studies of hu- practices continue in the form of the collection
man variation as a source of insights into the bi- of "trophy skulls" from battlefields by modern
ological and cultural evolution of humankind is soldiers (McCarthy, 1994; Sledzik and Ousley,
beginning to be realized. This paradigm shift 1991).
has involved replacing the futile nineteenth- Among Christians, the belief that proximity
century preoccupation with drawing stable to the bones and other body parts of saints
boundaries around populations, whose biologi- could bring miracles was common as early as
cal and cultural makeup is constantly in flux, the fourth century A.D. This use of human re-
with new evolutionary ecological approaches mains as objects of religious veneration gradu-
that recognize the complexity and adaptive sig- ally resulted in the accumulation of substantial
nificance of interactions between genetic vari- skeletal collections. By the ninth century the re-
ability and developmental plasticity. This mains of martyrs had become so valuable that
theoretical reorientation has resulted in a new competition between religious centers created a
bioarchaeological approach to the analysis of regular commerce that sometimes degenerated
skeletal remains from earlier human pop- to the point of melees between monks attempt-
ulations that uses cultural, biological, and pale- ing seize the bodies of martyrs by force of arms
oenvironmental evidence to illuminate the (Gauthier, 1986; Geary, 1978; Thurston, 1913).
processes of human adaptation (Larsen, 1997). The belief that the miraculous powers of impor-
With this new approach has come an increasing tant religious figures could be accessed through
appreciation for the many ways the remains of their bones stimulated a lively market in human
our ancestors can help us to both better under- remains. At one point 19 churches claimed to
stand and devise solutions to the many seem- possess the mandible of John the Baptist
ingly intractable problems of violence, disease, (Collin de Plancy, 1821). Philip II (1556-1598)
and social inequity that we currently face. of Spain, a zealous Catholic, commissioned an
envoy to collect the remains of as many saints
and martyrs as he could, and assembled a col-
THE SOURCES OF SKELETAL lection of 11 complete skeletons along with
COLLECTIONS thousands of skulls, long bones, and other mis-
cellaneous skeletal elements at his residence,
To fully appreciate the concerns that modern the Escorial near Madrid (Wittlin, 1949). Belief
indigenous people have about collections of in the magical powers of human remains was
human skeletons, it is necessary to understand not limited to those of Catholic saints. When an
the historical and social context in which skele- Egyptian mummy was obtained by Leipzig,
Germany, in 1693 it soon became a tourist at- century, the inadequacies of the old system of
traction owing to the common belief "that it l earning anatomy by studying models and oc-
pierceth all parts, restores wasted limbs, con- casionally observing a demonstrator dissect a
sumption, heckticks, and cures all ulcers and criminal's body became increasingly apparent.
corruption" (Wittlin, 1949). With the growth of medical knowledge, aspir-
Until the middle of the eighteenth century, i ng surgeons began clamoring for more hands-
Europe had no museum collections in the mod- on experience so they could avoid the
ern sense. Instead, there were vast collections horrifying prospect of learning their trade
held by monarchs and the Catholic Church that through the butchery of their first living pa-
functioned as reliquaries, storehouses, and tients. This desire was reinforced by a growing
treasuries. During the Enlightenment, a strong public recognition of the value of being oper-
belief in the power of empirical investigations ated upon by someone with practical experi-
of the natural world as a method for the discov- cnce in dissection.
ery of' God's laws brought with it a need for These social pressures resulted in an expo-
museums whose purpose was the preservation nential increase in the demand for cadavers. To
of historical artifacts and natural objects for meet this need, "anatomical acts" were eventu-
scientific scrutiny. At first these collections ally passed that expanded the legal sources of
took the form of "curio cabinets" maintained cadavers to include the victims of duels, sui-
by wealthy aristocrats for their personal re- cides, and, most importantly, unclaimed bod-
search and the edification of their friends. i es. The demand was so great that this new
Many of these early collectors were physicians l egal supply of bodies was often inadequate
and, owing to their professional interest in hu- and, throughout the nineteenth century, med-
man anatomy, they naturally included human ical schools were still enlisting the services of
skeletons and preserved anatomical specimens body snatchers to obtain their instructional ma-
in their cabinets. For example, the large collec- terials (Blake, 1955; Blakely et al., 1997; New-
tion amassed by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), man, 1957).
the personal physician to Queen Anne and Although the increase in dissections opened
King George 11, included a number of human the possibility of increasing the scope of skele-
skeletons. Upon Sloane's death, these skeletons tal collections, this potential was not fully real-
and the rest of' his collection were bequeathed i zed. Collections were made of specimens with
to the British Parliament at a nominal sum and i nteresting anomalies and pathological condi-
served as the nucleus of the British Museum's tions but, as a rule, the rest of the dissected per-
natural history collection. In America, schol- son's skeleton was disposed of in what often
arly associations such as The Library Company seems to have been a cavalier fashion (Blakely,
of Philadelphia, which was formed in 1731 by 1 997:167). From what can be discerned from
Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues, began to the remnants of nineteenth-century medical
maintain collections that included anatomical school collections that survive today, little effort
specimens and, around the same time, the was made to create carefully documented skele-
Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia estab- tal collections of known age and sex for use in
lished its teaching cabinet with the acquisition assessing the normal range of human variation.
of a human skeleton and a series of anatomical The failure to create such systematic collections
models (Orosz, 1990:16-17). probably stems in part from the prevalence of
These collections of skeletons and anatomi- racist views that minimized the importance of
cal specimens were of great value because they variation within groups and exaggerated the
made it possible to provide instruction in surgi- significance of population differences.
cal anatomy without offending Christians who The immensity of the carnage brought by
had religious objections to the dissection of ca- the Civil War profoundly affected attitudes to-
davers. During the last half of the eighteenth ward the dead in the United States (Laderman,
THE SOURCES OF SKELETAL COLLECTIONS 11
1996). The war desensitized people to death the people whose bodies were stolen (Riding
and this made it possible to view corpses with In, 1992).
increasing detachment. At the same time, the Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth
logistic problems the military faced in preserv- century, large public natural history museums
ing the bodies of so many dead soldiers for began to be established whose goals were both
transportation back to their families turned popular education and scholarly research
corpses into commodities that needed to be (Orosz, 1990). These museums provided an in-
processed by professionals such as doctors and stitutional framework within which the large
undertakers. In this context of mass slaughter, skeletal collections could be consolidated from
rising professionalism, and growing rejection the smaller private collections of physicians
of religious beliefs in the resurrection of the and wealthy amateur archaeologists. These new
body, surgeons struggling to devise standard- museums had the resources necessary to main-
ized treatments for the sometimes horrifying tain staffs of professional research scientists
injuries they faced began to view autopsies and and to augment their osteological collections
other medical research on dead soldiers as an through purchases from private collectors and
ethical imperative. To accommodate this re- the sponsorship of archaeological expeditions
search the Army Medical Museum was throughout the world.
founded in 1862 as a repository for thousands In the United States, the most important nat-
of skeletal specimens, preserved organs, pho- ural history museums from the perspective of
tographs, and other medical records obtained collections of human skeletal remains are the
during the treatment and autopsy of military Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1846, the
casualties (Barnes et al., 1870; Otis and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Eth-
Woodward, 1865). nology, founded 1866, the American Museum
At the close of the Civil War, army doctors of Natural History, founded in 1869, the
shifted the focus of their collecting activities Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
toward medical concerns arising from the Ethnology, founded in 1866, the Columbian
Indian wars in the western United States, such Museum of Chicago (now the Chicago Field
as the treatment of arrow wounds (Bill, 1862; Museum), founded in 1893, the Lowie Museum
Parker, 1883; Wilson, 1901). One aspect of this of Anthropology (now the Phoebe Hearst
work involved the collection of Native Amer- Museum), founded in 1901, and the San Diego
ican crania and artifacts from battlefields and Museum of Man, founded in 1915. During the
cemeteries. This was implemented through a twentieth century the number of museums with
letter from the Surgeon General's Office, dated significant holdings of human skeletal remains
January 13, 1868, that stated: "Will you allow rapidly increased and by 1998 about 700 federal
me to ask your kind interposition in urging and private institutions possessed skeletal re-
upon the medical officers in your departments mains from an estimated 110,000 individuals.
the importance of collecting for the Army The research value of these collections
Medical Museum specimens of Indian Crania varies enormously depending upon the condi-
and of Indian Weapons and Utensils, so far as tions under which they were collected. Owing
they may be able to procure them." Other doc- to the cranial typology orientation of nine-
uments make it clear that these collections teenth-century physicians, most of the material
were made under the protest of the Indians collected before the beginning of the twentieth
whose graves were being raided and that such century consists of isolated crania, lacking as-
activities could even result in further hostilities sociated mandibles or infracranial remains.
with the Indians (Bieder, 1992). Although gov- Because of the predisposition of these re-
ernment sanctioned grave robbing of this kind searchers to interpret human variation within a
eventually stopped, it understandably continues framework of stable types that were compara-
to provoke outrage among the descendants of tively immune to environmental influences,
most of them lack adequate provenience in- After writing a doctoral dissertation on anthro-
formation and are simply labeled in terms of pological materials, which included informa-
preconceived racial categories or broad geo- tion on the geographic and ethnic origins of the
graphical regions. All of these factors greatly people who contributed their skeletons to the
reduce the value of such collections for re- Western Reserve collection, Cobb returned to
search purposes. Fortunately, most of the skele- Washington where he created a similar collec-
tal material in museums derives from the work tion at Howard University (Cobb, 1936). A
of professional archaeologists and is associated prolific author and dedicated teacher of
with at least some contextual information that anatomy, Cobb used his understanding of hu-
allows the individual to be placed in a mean- man biology, which in part was derived from
ingful historical, environmental, and cultural dissections and skeletal research, to improve
context. This type of information is essential the health and reinforce the civil rights of
for modern bioarchaeological research, which African Americans (Cobb, 1939; Cobb, 1948;
relies heavily on contextual information to re- Rankin-Hill and Blakey, 1994).
construct the cultural ecology of earlier human In Great Britain and Europe, a different ap-
populations. proach has been taken to the creation of known
During the first half of the twentieth cen- age and sex skeletal collections for use in an-
tury, several visionary anatomists realized the thropological research. The crypts outside
value of having skeletons from individuals of Saint Bride's Church, London, were disturbed
known age, sex, and ethnic background for use through bombing during World War II. Res-
in anthropological and forensic research on the toration of the church has resulted in a docu-
effects that environmental and genetic factors mented collection of skeletal remains dating
have on health, disease, and morphological from the mid-eighteenth century (Huda and
variation. Working in conjunction with the Bowman, 1995; Scheuer and Bowman, 1995).
teaching programs of medical schools, these Similar collections of people of known age and
researchers carefully recorded anthropometric sex from historic cemeteries have been estab-
data, vital statistics, health histories, and other lished in Coimbra, Portugal (Cunha, 1995),
relevant information on the people scheduled Lisbon, Portugal, Geneva, Switzerland (Gem-
for dissection. Afterwards they prepared their merich, 1997) and Hallstatt, Austria (Sjovold,
skeletons for curation in research collections. 1990, 1993). However, a great many anatomi-
Three of the largest of these dissection room cal collections of skeletons of nineteenth- and
collections were established in the United twentieth-century individuals exist in anatomy
States, at the Washington University School of departments and medical schools throughout
Medicine in St. Louis, the Western Reserve Europe, Britain, and other countries.
University in Cleveland, and Howard Univer-
sity in Washington, D.C.
A central figure in the creation of these THE VALUE OF HUMAN
collections is William Montague Cobb SKELETAL REMAINS
(1904-1990). Cobb, an African-American,
who was an acknowledged activist leader in the In the ongoing debate over the disposition and
African American community, realized the scientific analysis of ancient human remains in
value that empirical data on human variation museum collections, there is a tendency for the
has as an antidote to racism (see also Ubelaker, ethical issues surrounding skeletal research
Chapter 2). After receiving his medical degree and the maintenance of skeletal collections to
at Howard University, he did postgraduate be reduced to simplistic oppositions: science
studies at the Western Reserve University versus religion, right versus wrong, and so on.
where he helped T. Wingate Todd (1885-1938) Although framing the complex social issues
assemble that university's skeletal collection. underlying the debate in this way may be polit-
THE VALUE OF HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS 13
ically expedient, it is counterproductive for briefly describe the values scientists and de-
anyone seeking a solution that balances the scendant groups attach to ancient human re-
concerns of descendants against those of the mains.
scientific community. Bioarchaeologists focus their research on
From my brief discussion of the evolution ancient human skeletal remains, not out of idle
of beliefs about human remains, it is obvious scientific curiosity, but instead because they
that the details of the rituals people have de- believe that the information contained within
vised for the treatment of the dead have varied the remains of our ancestors is of great value to
enormously among the cultures of the world modern people. Human skeletal remains are a
through time. The practice of funeral rites by unique source of information on the genetic
friends and relatives and the use of a method of and physiological responses our ancestors
disposing of the body appear to be human uni- made to the challenges posed by past natural
versals but, beyond that, there is little unifor- and sociocultural environments. Consequently,
mity (Brown, 1991; Murdock, 1945). This they provide an extremely valuable adaptive
diversity of beliefs about how the dead should perspective on the history of our species.
be treated poses ethical dilemmas for bioar- Most of what we know about our recent his-
chaeologists when their scientific work con- tory is based on inferences derived through
flicts with the beliefs of the descendants of the analysis of artifacts, documents, oral histories,
people whose remains they study. and other products of human cultural activity.
One approach to resolving disputes over re- Owing to their symbolic content, such cultural
search on ancient skeletal remains is to view artifacts are difficult to interpret and often con-
such disagreements as cultural issues arising sistent with multiple, sometimes contradictory
from competing value systems (Goldstein and views of the past. The subjective aspects of at-
Kintigh, 1990). Conceiving of disputes over tempting to interpret cultural artifacts from the
the treatment of the dead as products of con- perspective of our current cultural milieu are
flicting value systems avoids polemics and well recognized: Historical works often reveal
self-righteous posturing in which each side bat- more about the cultural values and political bi-
tles for moral superiority and instead promotes ases of the historian than they do about the re-
communication and mutual understanding. ality of the historical event being described. All
This can eventually result in the discovery of historians are products of the culture in which
solutions that are consistent with the value sys- they live, and they are always selective in what
tems of both parties in the dispute. they report.
The only justification for the study of skele- Because of its biological basis in the physi-
tal remains from earlier human populations is ological processes of growth, development,
that such research yields information that is and acclimatization to environmental change,
useful to modern people. Although the value of the information about interactions with past
skeletal research seems self-evident to the peo- environments encoded in human remains pro-
ple who conduct it, there are many indigenous vides an extremely valuable comparative basis
people who feel that such work is not only use- for evaluating interpretations of the past based
less, but also extremely harmful owing to the on artifacts, documents, and other culture-
damage it does to them and the spirits of their based sources. The historical data provided by
ancestors. This conflict between the values sci- skeletal studies are of such great value because
entists and descendant groups attach to human the methodological problems inherent in ex-
remains is central to the most important ethical tracting evidence from a skeleton are com-
dilemmas bioarchaeologists face. Since mutual pletely different from those historians face
understanding is a prerequisite for finding a when they attempt to interpret the historical
common ground between these apparently in- significance of the cultural products with
commensurable world views, it is useful to which they work. The only way we can reduce
the cultural biases that distort our understand- concentration camps such as Terezin, the racks
ing of past events is through collecting a diver- of skulls from the Cambodian killing fields at
sity of evidence from sources that are Tuol Sleng Prison, and the cut marks on the
susceptible to different types of interpretative skeletons of the hundreds of massacred prehis-
error. The greater the diversity of the evidence toric Native Americans unceremoniously
we have about the past, the easier it is to rule buried at the Crow Creek site in South Dakota
out alternative interpretations that are unlikely speak volumes about real historical events that
to reflect actual events. By using a series of ended the lives of real people.
data sources that, standing alone, would be In certain respects, bones do not lie. To give
open to many different interpretations, it is in a specific example from my own research, the
this way possible to triangulate on what really presence of lesions indicative of severe, re-
happened in the past. peated physical abuse in the skeletons of chil-
The unique perspective that skeletal evi- dren murdered by their parents says something
dence provides on the history of our species very specific about a history of traumatic expe-
makes it a potent weapon against cultural rel- riences that a child suffered during its short life
ativists and historical revisionists who view ( Walker, 2000; Walker et al., 1997). Although
the past as a source of raw materials they can multiple "narratives" can be constructed based
exploit to refashion history into whatever nar- on the presence of such lesions (the child was
rative is currently considered au courant or extraordinarily clumsy or accident prone, the
politically expedient. In some schools of post- child's parents repeatedly beat him over a pro-
modernist thought, history is viewed as a sym- longed period until he died, and so on), at a
bolic construct devoid of any objective truth: fundamental level such skeletal evidence says
all we are left with is an endless process of something indisputable about a physical inter-
constructing conflicting narratives about the action that took place between the dead child
past that are all of equal merit or are only of and his or her physical environment. Unlike
merit because they are different. In some rari- written records or oral histories, human re-
fied corners of the humanities, the possibility mains are not culture-dependent symbolic con-
of knowing with certainty that voluminously structs. Instead they provide an extraordinarily
documented historical events such as the detailed material record of actual physical in-
Holocaust actually occurred is actively de- teractions that occurred between our ancestors
bated (Braun, 1994; Friedman, 1998; Jordan, and their natural and sociocultural environ-
1995; Kellner, 1994). In the world of these ments. As such, human remains are extremely
theorists, people interested in discovering valuable sources of evidence for reconstructing
what happened in the Holocaust are doomed to what actually happened in the past.
an academic life of continuously revisualizing This esoteric view that bioarchaeologists
and recontextualizing subjective impressions hold concerning the central role that collec-
of subjective descriptions of the slaughter of tions of human skeletal remains play in helping
millions of people into new, contradictory, us to obtain an objective view of history is not
and, from their perspectives, more meaningful widespread. The vast majority of the world's
imaginations of the past. population views human remains with a mix-
In contrast to the symbolic problems inher- ture of morbid fascination and dread because
ent in historical reconstructions based upon they serve as such vivid reminders of one's
written records and oral histories, human own mortality and impending death. The sym-
skeletal remains provide a direct source of evi- bolic saliency of directly confronting a dead
dence about the lives and deaths of ancient and person has been deftly exploited for a diversity
modern people that is, at a fundamental level, of religious, political, and economic purposes.
free from cultural bias (Walker, 1997). The Throughout the world, in many different set-
skeletons of the people buried row upon row at tings, human remains are placed on public dis-
`THE VALUE OF HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS 15
play and used in ways designed to foster group Sleng Prison Museum as evidence of the
cohesion and legitimize religious or political Cambodian genocide outweighed Buddhist reli-
authority. During times of social instability, it gious beliefs that mandate cremation (Erlanger,
is common for these same remains to be de- 1988; Peters, 1995). The denial of burial in
stroyed or humiliated to weaken and disrupt the Christian countries as a form of posthumous
group solidarity they once fostered (Cantwell, punishment and object lesson for the living has
1 990). The controversy over the continued dis- already been mentioned. In England the heads
play of Lenin's remains in Red Square and the of people such as Oliver Cromwell were dis-
disposition of the recently discovered remains played on poles erected on the roof of the Great
of Czar Nicholas II and his family provide Stone Gate of London Bridge, and gibbets con-
good examples of how human remains can be taining the rotting bodies of famous pirates
used as tools to advance or suppress political such as Captain Kidd were strategically placed
i deas and facilitate or disrupt social cohesion along the banks of the Thames to greet sailors
( Caryl, 1998; Fenyvesi, 1997). as they returned from the sea. During the nine-
The strong symbolic power of human re- teenth century, the heads of Miguel Hidalgo
mains has encouraged people to devise an and three other leaders of the Mexican war of
amazing number of uses for them. Throughout independence met a similar fate when they
the world, displays of human remains are hung on public display in cages for ten years as
among the most effective tools for luring peo- grim reminders of the folly of revolution.
ple into museums. At the British Museum, for Ironically, these same skulls of Mexico's found-
example, postcards of mummies rival the ing fathers have recently been resurrected and
Rosetta Stone in public popularity (Beard again put on public display for the opposite pur-
1 992). In many places displays of human re- pose: they rest next to each other under glass on
mains are such popular tourist attractions that red velvet in a dimly lit crypt where they re-
they have become the mainstays of local mind school children of the heroism of the
economies. The Museo de los Momias in country's founders (Osmond, 1998).
Mexico, where the naturally mummified bod- As is illustrated by the case of Hidalgo's
i es of poor people who could not afford to pur- skull, the strong symbolic value of human re-
chase permanent graves are on display, is touted mains endow those who control them with a
as Mexico's second most popular museum, powerful tool that can be used to vividly ex-
bested only by the anthropological museum in press multiple, sometimes contradictory, mean-
Mexico City (Osmond, 1998). Two similar ex- ings. Owing to this great symbolic power, it is
amples are the awe-inspiring creativity of dis- not surprising that issues surrounding the con-
plays of thousands of disinterred human bones trol, treatment, and disposition of human re-
i n the All Saints Cemetery Chapel near Kutna mains pose some of the most vexing ethical
Hora in the Czech Republic and in the Church dilemmas skeletal biologists face. Bioarchae-
of the Capuchins in Rome (Fig. 1.1). ologists do not view human remains primarily
In some cases the symbolic value of retain- as symbols. Instead they value them as sources
i ng human remains for display is sufficient to of historical evidence that are key to under-
override religious sanctions against it. Medieval standing what really happened during the bio-
Chinese Ch'an Buddhists practiced mummifi- logical and cultural evolution of our species.
cation of eminent priests as demonstrations of This lack of concern with symbolic issues is in
the relationship between spiritual attainment stark contrast to the richness of the symbolic
and the incorruptibility of the body even though connotations human skeletons have for most
they espoused a religious doctrine that accorded people. This conflict in worldviews is espe-
little value to the corpse. A similar example is cially acute in areas of the world that were sub-
the recent decision that the value of the display jected to European colonization. In North
of bones from Khmer Rough victims at the Tuol America, Hawaii, and Australia, where the
Figure 1.1 The interior of the All Saints Cemetery Chapel in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora in the Czech
Republic. The chapel is decorated with the bones of some 40,000 people whose remains were excavated by from
a nearby graveyard by Monks of the Cistercian order.
indigenous people suffered the greatest devas- That the views of indigenous people con-
tation at the hands of European colonists, an- cerning this issue have changed dramatically
cient human remains have assumed great during the past forty years is amply illustrated
significance as symbols of cultural integrity by archaeological reports that describe the en-
and colonial oppression. In this postcolonial thusiastic participation of Native Americans in
world gaining control over ancestral remains is the excavation of burials, some of whose study
increasingly considered essential to the sur- by bioarchaeologists are currently under dis-
vival and revitalization of indigenous cultures. pute (Benson and Bowers, 1997; Brew, 1941;
THE VALUE OF HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS 17
Fewkes, 1898; Hewett, 1953; Hrdlicka, 1930a, museum collections. He cites an unpublished
1930b, 1931; Hurt et al., 1962; Judd, 1968; survey that John S. Sigstad conducted in 1972
Neuman, 1975; Roberts, 1931; Smith, 1971; of Indian tribes in the BIA Aberdeen region.
Smith et al., 1966). As late as the 1960s, Inuit All respondents agreed that human remains in
people in the Northwest Territory of Canada museums should be reburied, 95% indicated
who I worked with seemed little concerned bones should not be displayed in museums, and
about the excavation of ancient skeletal re- only 35% of the respondents believed that hu-
mains. In fact, they were extremely cordial to man remains should be excavated for scientific
the members of the expedition I was on and as- research (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).
sisted us in any way they could. Although they Some indigenous people have the erroneous
expressed mild concerns about carrying human belief that only the remains of their ancestors
skeletons in their boats, they otherwise were are studied and cite this as a reflection of the
supportive of and expressed considerable inter- racist attitudes of the European colonists who
est in our bioarchaeological work. robbed them of their land (Tobias, 1991;
To comprehend the urgency of the current Vizenor, 1986). They feel that such research
concerns Native Americans have about the degrades them by singling them out to be
treatment of their ancestral remains it is neces- "made fun of and looked at as novelties"
sary to understand the magnitude of the recent (Mihesuah, 1996; Walters, 1989). Bioarchae-
disruptions of their cultures. Beginning at the ologists respond to this charge by pointing out
end of the nineteenth century, systematic at- the vast collections of non-Native American
tempts began to be made to separate Native skeletal remains in European museums and ar-
American children from their families, sup- guing that it would be racist not to have collec-
press their Native identities, and inculcate them tions of Native American remains in New
with Christian values (Ellis C, 1996; Loma- World museums, since this would imply that
waima, 1993). Simultaneously, the isolation knowledge of the history of the indigenous
that formerly characterized life on the remote people of the New World had nothing to con-
reservations in marginal areas that the govern- tribute to the understanding of our common
ment relegated them to began to break down past (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).
owing to the development of interstate high- Some indigenous people reject the epistemol-
ways, radio, television, and the intrusions of ogy of science, at least as it applies to their his-
tourists. These developments have had such a tory and cultural affairs, and instead prefer to
devastating effect on the transmission of tradi- view the past as it is revealed through traditional
tional beliefs and practices that the remnants of ways of knowing, such as oral history, legend,
earlier times preserved in museums have in- myth, and appeal to the authority of revered
creasingly become a cultural focus. Control leaders. For people with this perspective, scien-
over these collections is an important political tific research directed toward documenting the
issue for Native Americans because, by gaining past is not only superfluous, but also potentially
control over the biological and cultural remains culturally subversive owing to the capacity of
of their ancestors, they can begin to reassert scientific evidence to conflict with traditional
their cultural identity within the dominant beliefs about the past and, in this way, undermine
Euro-American culture. the authority of traditional religious leaders.
When viewed within this context of cultural From this perspective, scientific investigations
marginalization and repression, it is easy to see into the history of indigenous cultures are simply
why many indigenous people see little value in another manifestation of the attempts of an op-
what to them are the very nebulous goals of pressive imperialist colonial power to control
bioarchaeologists. Zimmerman (Ubelaker and and weaken the belief systems of indigenous
Grant, 1989) presents evidence supporting the people so that they will be easier to exploit
depth of Indian concern about the retention of (Bray, 1995; Dirlik, 1996; Riding In, 1996).
In academia, this position clearly resonates cal (Clark, 1997). All living Indians thus have a
with radical postmodernist theorists of the hu- responsibility for the spiritual well-being of
manities who believe that reconstructing history their ancestors that requires them to assure that
as an objective reality is a hopeless endeavor their ancestors are buried in the ground where
and instead argue that history is a symbolic they can be reintegrated into the earth and
weapon that ethical people should use to help complete the circle of life and death (Bray,
the marginal political and cultural constituencies 1995; Halfe, 1989). Contemporary Native
of the world in their struggles against the hold- Americans who hold these beliefs argue that,
ers of power (Hodder et al., 1995). so long as ancestral spirits are suffering be-
This tension between traditional and scien- cause their bones are not buried in the earth,
tific views of the past has recently been living people will continue to suffer a myriad
brought into sharp focus through the contro- of adverse consequences. Thus, any activity in-
versy over the disposition of the 9,300-year-old consistent with reburial, such as excavation,
human remains found at the Kennewick site on study, museum curation, and storage, is consid-
the banks of the Columbia River in Washington ered an act of desecration and disrespect. For
State (Hastings and Sampson, 1997; Lemon- indigenous people with such views, there is no
ick, 1996; Morell, 1998; Petit, 1998; Preston, middle ground upon which scientific research
1997; Slayman, 1997). Scientists who have ex- can be conducted on human skeletal remains
amined these remains say they possess charac- and associated artifacts. These remains are of
teristics unlike those of modern Native great spiritual and psychological importance
Americans. They believe that research into rea- and their reburial is required to heal the
sons for this difference has the potential to wounds of colonial oppression (Emspak, 1995;
make an important contribution to our under- Murray and Allen, 1995)
standing of the history of humankind. Mem-
bers of the five Native American tribes that
have claimed the skeleton, on the other hand, ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
believe that the question of the cultural affilia- OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS
tion of this individual has already been re-
solved by their elders who tell them that they Given these sharply polarized views concern-
have lived in the area where the skeleton was ing the value of scientific research on human
found since the beginning of creation. The remains, what are the ethical responsibilities of
complexity of this dispute increased further skeletal biologists? On one hand, we have
when members of the Asutru Folk Assembly, a bioarchaeologists who believe that the histori-
traditional European pagan religion, sued for cal evidence obtained from human remains is
the right to use scientific research to decide if critical for defending humankind against the
this individual is one of their ancestors. They historical revisionist tendencies of repressive,
claim that "It's not an accident that he came to genocidal political systems, and, on the other,
us at this time and place ... Our job is to listen we have indigenous people who believe that
to (the bones) and hear what they have to say" the spirits of their ancestors are being tortured
(Lee, 1997). on the shelves of museums by racist, genoci-
Modern indigenous people often frame such dal, colonial oppressors. If we can accept the
disputes over the power to control the interpre- relativist perspective that both of these views
tation of tribal history in spiritual terms. It is a have some validity, then it is possible to envis-
common pan-Indian religious belief that all age a compromise that gives due recognition to
modern Native Americans are spiritually both value systems.
linked to all other Indian people living and Although there is still a broad spectrum of
dead (Walters, 1989). Another widely held be- perceptions of what is right and what is wrong
lief is that space is spherical and time is cycli- among modern people, with the precipitous
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS 19
decline in cultural diversity that has occurred the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" approved by
owing to the expansion of modern communi- the Inter-American Commission on Human
cation systems, we are seeing a worldwide Rights of the Organization of American States
convergence of values, at least concerning cer- in a section entitled "Spiritual and Religious
tain areas of human affairs (Donaldson, 1992). Freedom" specifically states that when "sacred
These shared values are developing as part of graves and relics have been appropriated by
the evolution of the transnational political and state institutions, they shall be returned" to in-
economic systems that are beginning to unite digenous people (IACHR, 1995).
the world's disparate cultures. The Declaration At the opposite end of the spectrum of polit-
of Human Rights of the United Nations, for ical inclusiveness and governmental authority
example, provides a generally accepted set of from the UN and OAS statements on human
rules for ethical human behavior that most rights are the ethics statements that profes-
people can accept in principle, if not in prac- sional associations develop for their members
tice. They include recognition of the right to to use as guides for the decisions they make
equality, freedom from discrimination, free- during their everyday activities. The decline in
dom from torture and degrading treatment, the capacity of organized religions and other
freedom from interference with privacy, and traditional social institutions to impose a unify-
freedom of belief and religion (UN, 1948). ing set of ethical principles acceptable to mod-
Other attempts to devise a set of ethical rules ern multicultural societies, and the constant
that encompass what some people believe is stream of ethical challenges posed by new
emerging as a culturally universal system of technological developments has stimulated
moral principles include widespread humanis- enormous interest in the formulation of stan-
tic values such as the recognition that it is dards for ethical conduct in many areas of pro-
wrong to be indifferent to suffering, that toler- fessional activity (Behi and Nolan, 1995;
ance of the beliefs of others is good, and that Bulger, 1994; Fluehr-Lobban, 1991; Krucke-
people ought to be free to live as they choose berg, 1996; Kuhse et al., 1997; Kunstadter,
without having their affairs deliberately inter- 1980; Lynott, 1997; Muller and Desmond,
fered with by others (Hatch, 1983). 1992; Navran, 1997; Parker, 1994; Pellegrino,
The cultural values expressed by the asser- 1995; Pyne, 1994; Salmon, 1997; Scanlon and
tion of basic human rights and universal moral Glover, 1995; Schick, 1998).
principles such as these can be criticized as Many professional associations and govern-
hegemonic attempts to use Western cultural mental agencies have developed ethical guide-
i deas as tools for gaining power and political lines for use by researchers in the biomedical
control for transnational business interests. For and social sciences that contain information di-
example, the Chinese government has recently rectly relevant to resolving the ethical dilem-
criticized allegations concerning its suppres- mas bioarchaeologists face when they work
sion of the rights of political dissidents as in- with ancient human remains (AAA, 1986,
sensitive to unique Chinese cultural values 1997; AIA, 1991, 1994; CAPA, 1979; MRCC,
such as obedience to authority, collectivism, 1998; NAPA, 1988; NAS, 1995; SAA, 1996;
family, and other dispositions (Li, 1998). SAP, 1983; SPA, 1976; UNESCO, 1995).
This issue of developing universal, govern- Although only a few of these statements
ment-sponsored standards of ethical behavior deal specifically with issues surrounding the
is of more than theoretical interest to bioar- study of human remains, a comparison of the
chaeologists since it is commonly asserted that principles for ethical behavior they espouse
the maintenance of skeletal collections for use suggests considerable agreement on a few fun-
i n scientific research is a violation of a funda- damental rules that can be used to guide re-
mental human right. For example, Article X of searchers who work with ancient human
the draft of the "Inter-American Declaration on remains: (1) human remains should be treated
with dignity and respect, (2) descendants and respect (Buikstra, 1981; Ubelaker and
should have the authority to control the dis- Grant, 1989).
position of the remains of their relatives, and A skeptic might question the wisdom of ex-
(3) owing to their importance for understand- tending the concept of human dignity to the
ing the history of our species, the preservation dead: What does the treatment of human re-
of collections of archaeological collections of mains have to do with human rights or human
human remains is an ethical imperative. dignity? In view of the atrocities currently be-
Each of these principles is based upon a ing perpetrated on helpless people by repressive
complicated set of value judgments whose im- governments throughout the world, would it not
plications for the real-world practices of skele- be more productive to focus the fight for human
tal biologists depend in many ways upon the rights on living people who could actually ben-
cultural lens through which they are viewed. efit from the results? In my view, a convincing
For example, what is considered the dignified argument can be made that, although the human
treatment of human remains varies widely de- being that skeletal remains are derived from no
pending on a person's cultural background. longer exists, their former intimate association
These ethical principles also contain an inher- with a living person is more than sufficient to
ent contradiction since recognizing the rights earn them respectful treatment. The logic of this
of descendants may at times conflict with the argument is similar to that used by animal rights
preservation ethic. activists who admit that, although animals by
definition do not have human rights, their ill-
treatment does demean humans and thus has
Respect for Human Dignity
i mplications for human behavior (McShea,
The ethical principle that human remains 1994; Man's Mirror, 1991). In the same way it
should be treated with respect and dignity is can be argued that disrespectful treatment of
consistent with, and can be seen as an exten- human remains is morally repugnant because of
sion of, respect for human dignity, which is the its potential to desensitize people in a way that
cardinal ethical principle for modern research is likely to encourage a lack of respect for and
on human subjects in the biomedical and social consequent ill-treatment of the living (Grey,
sciences (Margareta, 1996; MRCC, 1998; 1983:105-153).
UNESCO, 1995). This ethical principle is If we accept the premise that it is unethical
based upon the belief that it is unacceptable to to treat human remains with disrespect, we are
treat human remains solely as a means (mere still faced with the problem that respectful
objects or things), because doing so fails to re- treatment is a highly subjective concept. The
spect the intrinsic human dignity of the person cultures. of the world have devised an enor-
they represent and thus impoverishes all of hu- mousvariety ways of respecting the dead that
manity. An argument can be made that since include hanging the skulls of close relatives
the remains of dead people are just "decaying from the rafters of huts, using skulls of parents
organic matter" that "feels nothing, conceptu- as pillows, and letting vultures feed upon dead
alizes nothing, has no interests, and cannot suf- relatives. Some modern people believe that
fer," in other words, that there is no person here pumping dead relatives full of chemicals,
to respect or disrespect, the respect is not for dressing them up, and burying them in the
the body, but the antemortem person from ground is respectful. Others believe that incin-
whom the remains are derived (Lynch, 1990). erating them, grinding up what's left in a mill,
Although it is true that, for most skeletal biolo- and putting the resulting bone meal in a card-
gists, human remains are viewed as deperson- board box is respectful. In the cultural context
alized and desanctified, there is still general of scientific research, respect for human re-
agreement that they are nevertheless highly mains derives not only from their association
meaningful and should be treated with dignity with a person who was once alive, but also
from an appreciation of the information about possible. Giving close relatives authority to
the past they can yield. To a scientist, respectful make decisions about the disposition of the
treatment of human remains includes taking remains of the recent dead appears to be a cul-
measures to insure the physical integrity of the tural universal. Only in exceptional circum-
remains and the documentation associated with stances, such as the special dispositions
them, avoiding treatments that will contami- mandated for the bodies of executed criminals
nate or degrade their organic and inorganic as part of their punishment, and the control that
constituents, and so on. coroners are given over bodies that might yield
These convoluted academic arguments evidence relevant to legal proceedings, is the
about the definition of and justification for right of close relatives to decide the disposition
treating human remains with respect, of course, of a body denied. Many cultures have special
seem bizarre to indigenous people who view rules governing the disposition of the bodies of
ancestral remains not as inanimate objects de- people who die under unusual circumstances,
void of life but instead as living entities that are and some of these make exceptions to the rule
i mbued with ancestral spirits. From the per- of kin control over the dead. Herodotus, for ex-
spective of some Native Americans, for exam- ample, observed that the Egyptians gave spe-
ple, ancient human skeletons are "not just cial treatment to the bodies of people who
remains, they're not bone to be studied, you're drown in the Nile or were eaten by crocodiles:
dealing with spirits as you touch those remains" "No one may touch the corpse, not even any of
(Augustine, 1994). As Rachel Craig, a Native the friends or relatives, but only the priests of
Alaskan put it, "I feel an obligation to give back the Nile, who prepare it for burial with their
to them, to speak for them. Our grandmothers own hands-regarding it as something more
have told us the importance of the spirit world. than the mere body of a man-and themselves
The spirits of those people cannot rest and lay it in the tomb" (Herodotus, 1990).
make their progress in the spirit world unless Considering the universal recognition of the
they know that those bones are put back in the rights of relatives, it not surprising that this is
earth where they belong. That is our teaching" one issue upon which, as far as I know, all
(Craig, 1994). This same view of the retention bioarchaeologists agree: if skeletal remains can
of skeletons in museums as interfering with the be identified as those of a known individual for
afterlife and separating the spirits of the dead whom specific biological descendants can be
from the community of the living is forcefully traced, the disposition of those remains, includ-
expressed by William Tallbull, a member of the ing possible reburial, should be decided by the
Northern Cheyenne tribe: "We talk about peo- closest living relatives.
ple coming home. When the people came home Many of the ethical dilemmas that skeletal
from the museum and are buried at home, they biologists face arise not out of a disagreement
all go and visit every house. This is where the over this fundamental principle of ethical be-
joy comes in. They are home. They are here. havior but, instead, over how the rights of de-
They walk around through the village and be- scendants should be recognized in real-world
come part of us again. That's all we are asking" situations. The first problematic area concerns
(Tallbull, 1994). how the rights of relatives with different rela-
tionships to the dead person should be bal-
anced against each other. In modern legal
Descendant Rights
systems authority over the dead is judged using
Since disputes over who should have the right a rigid hierarchy of rights. For example, the
to control the disposition of ancient human re- Uniform Anatomical Gifts Act establishes the
mains are central to many of the ethical dilem- following order of priority for people autho-
mas bioarchaeologists face, it is useful to rized to make decisions about the authorization
consider this issue in as broad a perspective as of removal of body parts: (1) the spouse, (2) an
adult son or daughter, (2) either parent, everyone has the same number of children.
(4) adult brother or sister, (5) the person's legal Even if we account for these complicating vari-
guardian at the time of death, (6) any other per- ables, the fact remains that many living people
son authorized to dispose of the body. Even are likely to be related to an individual who
here, there is considerable room for cultural lived many generations ago.
variation in rules governing control over the If we really believe that relatives should de-
dead. In China, for example, because of its the cide the disposition of ancestral remains, how
pervasive patriarchal family structure, author- can we identify those descendants and allow
ity of the wife regarding funeral arrangements them to make a collective decision about the
is likely to be less than that of the male mem- proper treatment of their relative's bones? The
bers of his patriline (Cooper, 1998). problem of linking modern people to our
In contrast to the agreement about giving hunter-gatherer ancestors is complicated by
lineal descendants control over the disposition the highly mobile lifestyle of such popula-
of the remains of close relatives, there is a no tions. This decreases the likelihood that the an-
consensus concerning the question of the ap- cestral remains of a modern group will be
propriate way to decide the disposition of hu- found in the territory in which that modern
man remains that are distantly related to group currently resides. In situations of popu-
living people. What is the ethical way to de- lation replacement, it is in fact more likely that
cide the disposition of the remains of people the modern people who now live in an area
who are many generations removed from any were directly responsible for the extermination
living person? How shall we weigh the many of the ancient people who formerly occupied
attenuated genetic and cultural ties that link that same territory.
large numbers of living people to ancestors Even in cases where it is clear that descen-
who lived thousands, hundreds of thousands, dants continue to occupy the land of their an-
or even millions of years ago? Which living cestors, there is still the problem posed by the
individuals should be granted the moral au- expansion of living descendants with increas-
thority to decide the disposition of our ancient ing genealogical remoteness. In an area such
ancestors? as Europe, with a relatively stable gene pool,
The basic elements of the dilemma can be someone who died more than a few hundred
better understood from a scientific perspective years ago is likely to be related to hundreds of
by considering how the genetic and cultural thousands, if not millions of living people. For
connections that link modern people and ear- instance, DNA studies conducted on the 5000-
lier generations vary as a function of time. The year-old mummified body recently found in
first problem is that the more distant an ances- the Tyrolean Alps suggest a genetic relation-
tor is from a descendant, the more descendants ship between this person and the 300 million
there are sharing the same genetic relationship or so contemporary people living in central
to that ancestor. The variables that influence and northern Europe (Handt et al., 1994). This
the number of shared ancestors that living peo- of course does not include many millions of
ple have are complex. However, one fact is in- additional people living in North America and
disputable: as we probe more deeply into our elsewhere with ancestral ties to northern
family tree, the probability of discovering an Europe.
ancestor we share with a large number of other In the Western Hemisphere the problem of
living people increases dramatically. In a lin- assigning rights for the control of ancestral re-
eage of people who each had two children and mains to living descendants is complicated by
did not marry relatives, it would take seven gene flow between indigenous Americans and
generations, or about 250 years, to produce the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia. For ex-
over five billion modern descendants. People, ample, geneticists estimate that 31 % of the
of course, tend to marry relatives and not contemporary gene pool of people identified as
Hispanic or Mexican Americans is derived which it was revealed to them that they are the
from their Native American ancestors (Gardner reincarnation of an Inca princess, that we give
et al., 1984; Ilanis et al., 1991). These Native to descendants with demonstrable genetic links
American descendants are thus numerically a to earlier populations? This is where the rejec-
very significant component of the New World tion of scientific evidence and the uncondi-
population and, if demographic trends con- tional acceptance of cultural relativism can
tinue, are likely to replace non-Hispanic Euro- become problematic (Goldstein and Kintigh,
Americans as the ethnic majority in the United 1990:587-588).
States in less than one life span (Edmondson, It is also fair to ask at what point does a liv-
1996; Nicklin, 1997). If we believe that de- ing person's cultural connection to a dead per-
scendants should have a right to decide the dis- son become so attenuated that it merges into
position of the remains of their ancestors, then the common cultural heritage of all people, and
we need to find a way to incorporate the views thus no longer provides a moral basis for spe-
of Hispanic Americans into the process cial rights and control. Several cultural vari-
through which the disposition of ancient ables could be considered relevant here: a
American remains is decided. shared language, common religious practices,
Some people sec focusing on genetic rela- and so on. The difficulty is weighing the sig-
tionships in this way as a myopic and mis- nificance of such disparate cultural traits, espe-
guided biological reductionism. After all, is cially in the context of ancient remains and
not a person's cultural background more im- cultural evolution.
portant than the genetic links that tie them to This issue of cultural continuity is a con-
earlier generations'! From this perspective, tentious one, in part, because when indigenous
there are two types of ancestors, genetic and cultures are marginalized, disrupted, and driven
cultural, and it is the cultural link that a person to the brink of extinction, remnants of the past,
feels they have with the people who lived in i ncluding ancestral human remains, become in-
the past that. counts. Although the idea of lim- creasingly important as symbols of cultural op-
iting authority to make decisions about the dis- pression and survival. This inverse relationship
position of ancient human remains to people between concern over ancestral remains and
who share the deceased person's cultural iden- cultural continuity is illustrated by the differ-
tity makes some sense, applying this ethical ences between Latin America and North
principle is extremely problematic in real- America in concern over ancestral remains and
world situations. if the strength of a modern repatriation issues. In Latin American coun-
person's belief in their cultural link to an ear- tries where a strong sense of "Indianness" has
lier person's remains is to be the measure of been integrated into the national identity, hu-
moral authority, how are we to evaluate the rel- man remains are excavated and displayed with-
ative validity of such beliefs? out opposition in museums. In this context,
To give a specific example, many Native they serve as symbols of a national past that is
Americans see the intrusions of the "New Age" shared by and important to all citizens (Ube-
movement into their cultural identity as the ap- laker and Grant, 1989). The government of the
propriation of Native American spiritual tradi- United States, in contrast, has historically con-
tions by outsiders who are destroying Indian sidered Native Americans as outsiders to be
spirituality and contributing to white racism dealt with by isolating them on reservations
and genocide (Geertz, 1996, Hernandez-Avila, and suppressing their indigenous languages
1996; Jocks, 1996; Johnson W, 1996b; Kehoe, and beliefs to facilitate converting them into
1 996; Smith, 1991; Specktor, 1989). Is it ethi- functional members of the dominant Euro-
cally acceptable to give the same authority to Amcrican culture. These government policies
the beliefs of people who received their cul- have devastated Native American cultures and
tural identity during a psychotherapy session in contributed enormously to the hostility Indian
people feel over issues related to the control of idea that all modern people share a common
ancestral remains. ancestor. Instead, some believe that their tribe
In the United States, a legislative attempt has is the result of a special creation and that they
been made to use a combination of biological have lived in the area currently occupied by
and cultural continuity as the basis for giving their tribe since the beginning of time. Such
modern indigenous groups the rights over beliefs remove any uncertainties regarding an-
ancient skeletal remains. The Native Amer- cestral relationships and result in acrimonious
ican Graves Protection and Repatriation Act disputes between scientists and tribal members
(NAGPRA) gives federally recognized tribes such as those that have occurred over the
that can demonstrate a "cultural affiliation" to Kennewick skeleton (Hastings and Sampson,
ancestral remains the authority to control their 1997; Lemonick, 1996; Morell, 1998; Petit,
disposition. In this legal context, cultural affili- 1998; Preston, 1997; Slayman, 1997).
ation means "a relationship of shared group
identity which can be reasonably traced histori-
The Preservation Ethic
cally or prehistorically between a present day
group and an identifiable earlier group." In this The final universally accepted principle of
statute, cultural affiliation is established when bioarchaeologists is the preservation ethic.
"the preponderance of the evidence-based on Human remains are a source of unique insights
geographical, kinship, biological, archeologi- into the history of our species. They constitute
cal, linguistic, folklore, oral tradition, historical the "material memory" of the people who pre-
evidence, or other information or expert opin- ceded us and thus provide a direct means
ion-reasonably leads" to the conclusion that a through which we may come to know our an-
federally recognized tribe is culturally affiliated cestors. Because we believe that the lessons
with an "earlier group." that the remains of our ancestors can teach us
Although NAGPRA has benefited many about our common heritage have great value to
federally recognized tribes and has had the pos- modern people, it is an ethical imperative to
itive effect of increasing communication be- work to preserve as much as possible of this in-
tween Native Americans and bioarchaeologists, formation for future generations. This position
its exclusion of Native Americans who lack is championed by governments throughout the
federal recognition raises serious ethical issues. world who support archaeological research, en-
It is derided by some Native Americans who courage the conservation and preservation of
see it as another step in the long history of at- archaeological resources, and discourage un-
tempts to define "Native American groups" in necessary destruction of archaeological sites
ways that facilitate their control and manipula- (Knudson, 1986:397).
tion by oppressive governmental agencies. In As caretakers of this fundamental source of
California, for instance, many groups that by information on the biological history of our
any even-handed definition are authentic species, we need to promote the long-term
"tribes" have failed to receive official recogni- preservation of skeletal collections and in this
tion by the federal government, or have had way ensure that future generations will have
their federal recognition removed, and thus are the opportunity to learn from them and in this
denied full access to the provision of NAGPRA way know about and understand that history
(Goldberg, 1997; Walker, 1995). (Turner, 1986). Prehistoric research, including
Again, these legalistic considerations and osteological study, is one way that our common
academic concerns over how to establish a con- heritage can be fully revealed (White and
nection between the living and the dead seem Folkens, 1991:418-423). This position is
strange to indigenous people whose religious forcefully expressed in the Society for Amer-
beliefs resolve such issues for them. Many in- ican Archaeology Statement Concerning the
digenous people are creationists who reject the Treatment of Human Remains:
WHEREAS human remains constitute part of The progressive aspect of creating the more
the archaeological record and provide unique accurate view of reality that we strive for is an
information about demography, genetic rela- i mportant justification for the preservation of
tionship, diet, and disease which is of special skeletal collections. Most scientists recognize
significance in interpreting descent, health the cultural influences that focus their observa-
and nutritional status in living and ancient hu- tions on certain aspects of reality and color the
man groups; and
inferences they make based on those observa-
WHEREAS education and research in the an- tions (Glock, 1995; Tomaskova, 1995; Wylie,
thropological, biological, social and forensic 1989). Although we know that our conclusions
sciences require that collections of human are to some extent distorted by our cultural bi-
skeletal remains be available to responsible ases, we take comfort in the fact that these dis-
scholars; and tortions will be detected and corrected through
WHEREAS the study of humankind's past future research by others with different cultural
should not discriminate against any biological perspectives.
or cultural group: For this self-correcting aspect of the scien-
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the tific method to be operative, the evidence upon
Society for American Archaeology deplores which our conclusions are based must be avail-
the indiscriminant reburial of human skeletal able for scrutiny by future researchers. In
remains and opposes reburial of any human experimental fields such as physics, this is ac-
skeletal remains except in situations where complished through repeating experiments. In
specific lineal descendants can be traced and historical sciences such as bioarchaeology, our
it is the explicit wish of these living descen- reconstructions of what happened in the past
dants that remains be reburied rather than be- are refined and corrected through the reexami-
ing retained for research purposes; and that
nation of collections using new analytical tech-
no remains should be reburied without appro-
priate study by physical anthropologists with niques and theoretical perspectives.
special training in skeletal biology unless lin- During the past twenty years, the rate at
eal descendants explicitly oppose such study. which this self-correcting process operates
has increased markedly as a result of the
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the
restudy of skeletal collections in museums us-
Society for American Archaeology encourage
close and effective communication with ap- ing newly developed analytical techniques
propriate groups and with individual scholars that have greatly expanded the types of infor-
who study human remains that may have bio- mation we can retrieve from ancient human
logical or cultural affinity to those groups remains. Especially exciting are new chemical
(SAA, 1984). techniques that provide precise information
on the types of food people ate (Hult and
The preservation ethic is based on the scien- Fessler, 1998; Stott and Evershed, 1996;
tific premise that there are aspects of our shared Tuross and Stathoplos, 1993; and see Katzen-
reality that have the potential to be brought into berg, Chapter 11, and Sandford and Weaver,
sharper focus through the examination of an- Chapter 12), procedures for reconstructing
cient human skeletal remains. The fact that each ancestral relationships through DNA analysis
person sees the world through a slightly differ- (Hagelberg et al., 1994; Stone and Stoneking,
ent cultural lens does not mean that it is impos- 1993; Von Haeseler et al., 1996, and see
sible to translate between these different Stone, Chapter 13). New techniques are also
experiences to find a common basis of under- being developed for reconstructing the dis-
standing. The physical facts that we have for de- ease histories of human populations through
ciding what happened in the past are not the analysis of pathogen-specific bone pro-
infinitely plastic and this places material con- teins (Drancourt et al., 1998; Hoffman, 1998;
straints on our culturally biased interpretations. Ortner et al., 1992).
The development of these new, enormously ensure that future generations will be able to
informative, analytical techniques underscores gain access to the important historical infor-
how valuable human remains are as a source of mation they contain.
insights into the history of our species. The in-
formation content of a cultural product such as
stone tool is very meager in comparison to the SOURCES OF CONFLICT
wealth of biological and cultural information
that can be extracted from a human skeleton. The ethical principles described above have an
The historical information an artifact yields is inherent potential for conflict. The preservation
limited to data on the activity patterns and ethic, with its basis in the belief that the infor-
mental processes that can be inferred from its mation that skeletal studies can yield is of great
physical properties, form, and archaeological value to all people, can easily conflict with the
context. As Carver (1996) has pointed out, ethical principle that the descendants should
there is a subjective aspect to the identification have the right to decide the disposition of their
of the artifacts of human cultural activity that ancestor's remains. If we recognize the validity
are measurable, historically meaningful entities of the interests of both descendants and scien-
within the corpus of mud and stones that hu- tists in human skeletal remains, how do we deal
mans have left as the traces of their past activi- with the ethical problems that arise when the
ties. Through archaeological research, what preservation ethic conflicts with the desires of
was once muck is transformed into monuments descendants?
and the thunderstones of one generation be- When the remains of close relatives are in-
come the flint axes of the next. volved, there is unanimity among bioarchae-
The information contained within the ologists that the concerns of descendants
structure of the human skeleton, in contrast, is should override any scientific interests in
of a different sort. It is not a culture-depen- those remains. Ethical dilemmas, however,
dent symbolic construct. Skeletal remains frequently do arise when the ancestor-descen-
instead have their basis in adaptive physiolog- dant relationship is less clear-cut. How do we
ical and demographic processes operating at balance the scientific value of very ancient
the individual and species levels. Encoded skeletal remains against the concerns of mod-
within the molecular and histological struc- ern people who are remotely related to those
ture of skeletal tissues is a detailed record of same individuals?
the person's childhood development and adult In balancing the scientific value of archae-
history of metabolic responses to the chal- ological collections against descendant rights,
lenges encountered in his or her natural and most scientists see the strength of the ancestor-
sociocultural environment. This information descendant relationship as a continuum that be-
can be supplemented by an equally rich comes attenuated with succeeding generations.
record of ancestral relationships and the evo- At one end of this continuum we have remains
lutionary history of our species recorded in of people with living children and grandchil-
the structure of the DNA molecules preserved dren who have an undisputed right to deter-
within a skeleton. The information about his- mine the disposition of their close relative's
torical events encoded in the skeletons of our remains. At the other we have the remains of
ancestors can be thought of as a complex mes- very distant relatives, such as the earliest mem-
sage from the past that we can decode through bers of our species, to which all modern people
bioarchaeological research. Each skeleton has are equally related. From this evolutionary per-
a unique story to tell about that individual's spective, descendant rights are seen as decreas-
life as well as the evolutionary events that ing as the number of generations separating the
constitute the history of our species. By work- living and the dead increases. At some point,
ing to preserve ancient skeletal remains, we claims by one modern group of descendants to
SOURCES OF CONFLICT 27
decide the disposition of ancient human re- tific value against descendant rights is an eth-
mains are counterbalanced by the right of all nocentric attempt to frame the problem within
people to have access to the unique source of the "Eurowestern" system of cultural values
evidence on the history of our species that hu- that emphasizes finding solutions to problems
man skeletal remains provide. How do we de- that maximize benefits and minimize costs
cide when the scientific value of skeletal (Klesert and Powell, 1993). We can all agree
evidence is sufficient to override the concerns that we will never find a culture-free metric for
of remotely related descendants? weighing the value of knowing what actually
There is no easy answer to the question of happened in the past against the concerns
how to balance descendant rights against the descendants have about ancestral remains.
right of all people to know about the past, be- However, even if we agree that the benefit of
cause the values skeletal biologists and descen- giving control over ancestral remains to people
dants attach to human remains are essentially who identify themselves as descendants always
i ncommensurable. Part of the problem arises outweighs their value as a source of scientific
from the fact that many modern indigenous information, we still face the problem of deter-
people do not accept the idea that the ancestor- mining who should be able to claim standing as
descendant relationship becomes attenuated a descendant and what is the ethical thing to do
with time. Instead they see the spirits of their when there are competing claims.
ancestors, no matter how distant, as an integral When dealing with close relatives, where
part of the modern community of the living. the genealogical link between ancestor and de-
Nor do they see themselves as closely related scendant is known, allocating descendant
to the rest of humanity. Instead they believe rights over the remains of their relatives is
that they are the products of a special creation fairly straightforward. For example, we might
that occurred in the area their tribe currently establish a hierarchy that gives a person's
occupies and this is an issue of faith about spouse, children, parents, and siblings the au-
which scientific evidence is irrelevant (John- thority to control the disposition of their re-
son G, 1996). For instance, Armand Minthorn, mains. Even such a simple scheme as this is
a member of the Umatilla tribe, which claims open to charges of ethnocentrism because it
the 9500-year-old Kennewick skeleton, made reifies western kinship systems that emphasize
this point when he stated: "We know how time the importance of genetic relatedness as a cri-
began and how Indian people were created. teria for moral authority and invests the rights
They can say whatever they want, the scien- to make such decisions in a person's nuclear
tists" (The Invisible Man, 1996). The implica- family. Other societies might give greater au-
tion of such beliefs is that all human remains, thority to elder members of a person's patriline
no matter how ancient, if they are from the area or matriline, or disregard the modern Western
in which a group believes they were created, preoccupation with genetic relatedness alto-
are those of their direct ancestors. gether in favor of another culture-dependent
Although such creationist interpretations of conception of relatedness.
the history of our species seem strange to many Such cultural differences in ways of con-
scientists, they are shared by a substantial num- ceiving the ancestor-descendant relationship
ber of nonindigenous people. For example, a can even transcend the species boundary. For
recent survey found that about 20% of the peo- example, I know people who claim the moral
ple in the United States shared the Christian authority to remove the bones of dinosaurs
belief derived from a literal interpretation of from museum collections because they believe,
the bible that God created the cosmos about based on their creation myths, that these re-
5000 to 10,000 years ago (Goldhaber, 1996). mains are those of their ancestors before they
Some archaeologists argue that the utilitar- were transformed into human form. What are
i an approach of attempting to balance scien- we to do with people with sincerely held
beliefs about an ancestor-descendant relation- One option for dealing with the conflicts
ships such as this when those beliefs conflict that arise when several groups of people assert
with our own? the moral authority that comes with belief in
Even if we are willing to recognize the va- descendancy from distant ancestors is to take
lidity of such claims and agree that the moral refuge in the legal system where lawyers,
authority of belief in a close ancestor-descen- politicians, government functionaries, and po-
dant relationship always outweighs any scien- litically astute special interest groups can wres-
tific value skeletal collections might have, we tle with each other to find a solution to the
are still faced with the dilemma of deciding vexing question of who should have legal
what to do when there are conflicting claims standing as a descendant. Although they appear
for the same skeletal collections. This problem to envisage possible exceptions in cases of "ex-
is vividly illustrated by several recent cases in traordinary scientific value," this is in essence
the United States in which people with differ- what Klesert and Powell (1993) suggest when
ent beliefs about the past have disputed each they argue that "we must abide by the prefer-
other's assertions of moral authority to control ences of the legally recognized descendants" in
archaeological collections. In Hawaii, 15 feder- disputes concerning the excavation and analy-
ally recognized native groups became involved sis of ancient burials. For those who view our
in a dispute over the disposition of ancestral re- legal systems as distillations of the moral prin-
mains from Mokapu on the island of Oahu ciples of the people that laws govern, turning
(NAGPRA, 1994). One of these groups in- the ethical problem of defining "real" descen-
sisted that scientific research be conducted on dants over to the courts is very appealing. This
the remains of these ancient individuals to de- political strategy, of course, has the added prac-
termine their ancestral relationships while oth- tical advantage of not eliciting legal sanctions.
ers viewed such work as a deep insult to the The moral problem of relying on laws to decide
spirits of the their ancestors. In a similar case, which groups have the right to determine the
Stanford University acceded to the reburial de- disposition of human remains has its basis in
mands of one group of Ohlone Indians without the faulty assumption that we all live in just so-
scientific analysis over the objections of other cieties. Laws have, after all, in the recent past
Ohlone people who, from the Western ge- been used as the mechanisms through which
nealogical perspective, were equally related to groups have been defined by democratically
those remains (Gross, 1989; Workman, 1990). elected governments for purposes of apartheid,
Another acrimonious fight over descendant slavery, and genocide.
rights has arisen in the American Southwest The difficulties associated with legislative
between the Navajo and Zuni Indians as part of solutions to the ethical problem of determining
a government-instigated land deal that pro- the disposition of skeletal collections are illus-
hibits the Navajo from burying their dead in trated by the problems that have arisen in Israel
certain traditional burial areas and requires and the United States through legislative at-
them to renounce claims on sacred sites tempts to resolve disputes over the control of
(Benedek, 1992; Cockburn, 1997). Both tribes skeletal collections. Ultraorthodox Jewish or-
have publicly asserted their ancestral rights to ganizations in Israel, such as the Atra Kadisha,
the remains of what archaeologists call the who regard all academic study involving hu-
Anasazi culture. In other disputes, people who man remains a violation of Jewish law, have
have documentary evidence that they are de- long been at loggerheads with physical anthro-
scendant of the indigenous people from an area pologists over the excavation and the handling
have objected to the descendant rights claimed of human remains, including skeletons of ex-
by people who lack such documentation treme antiquity such as those of Neanderthals
(Erlandson et al., 1998; Haley et al., 1997; ( Watzman, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c). Owing to
Kelley, 1997). the compromises necessary for coalitions of
RESOLVING CONFLICTS 29
political parties to maintain control of the symbolic concerns of modern descendants

Israeli government, court rulings have been is- while allowing scientific research on ancestral
sued that make the study of unearthed human remains to continue. At St. Bride's Church,
remains impossible. London, the skeletons of people with known
In the United States, the Native American descendants whose burials were disturbed dur-
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act institu- ing the German bombings of World War II are
tionalizes long-standing inequities in the treat- respectfully maintained in a special room
ment of federally recognized and non-federally where they are available for scientific research
recognized descendants (Walker, 1998). Par- (Huda and Bowman, 1995; Scheuer and
ticularly troubling from an ethical standpoint is Bowman, 1995). In this way, the religious and
its failure to acknowledge the existence of au- symbolic concerns of descendants are re-
thentic descendant groups that, for one reason spected, while at the same time making it pos-
or another, have either failed to receive or re- sible for these remains to continue to yield
jected federal tribal recognition. This omission i mportant insights into the lives of eighteenth-
is especially unfortunate for the many federally and nineteenth-century Londoners that are not
unrecognized descendants in California and the adequately documented in written records
eastern United States where the vagaries of the ( Walker, 1997, 2000).
colonial process allowed the government to In all societies, cultural understandings of
avoid giving Indian tribes the rights of self- sacredness and ethical behavior are constantly
determination that go along with federal recog- being reshaped in response to changing social
nition. Even if such federally unrecognized realities. This is especially true for the issues
groups were given legal standing as descen- surrounding the treatment of ancient human
dants, the law would still present ethical prob- remains because the social context of bio-
lems because, with the minor exception of archaeological research is a modern one not
granting rights to people who can show a direct confronted by earlier generations. For many in-
genealogical connection to the remains of digenous societies the curation of ancestral re-
known individual, it fails to recognize the mains and their study is a new phenomenon
rights of the many people of Native American that presents practical problems requiring the
descent who lack any tribal affiliation. development of new rituals, new conceptions
of sacredness, and new beliefs concerning
what is respectful and disrespectful behavior.
RESOLVING CONFLICTS In other societies, especially sedentary ones ac-
customed to maintaining large, intensively
If we cannot rely on our legal systems to make used cemeteries, a long history of facing the
difficult ethical decisions concerning who de- practical and symbolic problems posed by the
scendants are and under what conditions their disturbance and handling of ancestral remains
rights should take precedence over the preser- has resulted in traditional solutions. For exam-
vation ethic, what basis is there for finding eq- ple, the Chumash Indians of southern Cali-
uitable solutions that balance these potentially fornia, with whom I have worked for the past
conflicting ethical principles? First, it is impor- twenty-five years, had specialists called li-
tant to recognize that there is no inherent con- wimpshit, which means "custodian of the alge-
flict between the maintenance of skeletal bra," who were familiar with the human
collections for scientific research and respect skeleton and the art of arranging bones. These
for the dead. As I previously mentioned, in medical practitioners not only could set bones,
many countries research upon and the public but they could also arrange all the bones of the
display of ancestral remains are matters of na- human skeleton properly, and determine
tional pride. In other situations, arrangements whether those ancestral bones had once be-
can often be made that satisfy the religious and longed to a man or a woman (Walker and
Hudson, 1993:46, 48). The need for someone trust and respect, and the recognition of com-
qualified to deal with human bone derived mon interests. Such relationships require time
from Chumash burial practices, which empha- to nurture. My academic colleagues and I have
size the importance of having the remains of spent our entire professional careers working
the dead near to the living. Cemeteries were, with Chumash descendants to protect and learn
therefore, located adjacent to or within vil- from the archaeological record left by their an-
lages. As the size of Chumash settlements cestors. This has involved assisting descen-
grew, so did the size of their cemeteries, and dants and local law enforcement authorities in
this frequently necessitated the excavation and the apprehension and prosecution of grave rob-
disturbance of ancestral remains (King, 1969). bers and looters and actively working to mini-
Although the social context of the issues mize the threats urban development poses for
surrounding the treatment of the dead that the their sacred sites and archaeological resources.
modern Chumash face are very different from At the request of descendants we have given
those they confronted in the past, traditional seminars and workshops on archaeology, oste-
beliefs about the treatment of the dead have ology, and the intricacies of the laws that gov-
served as a basis for creating a situation in ern the management and protection of
which bioarchaeological research can continue archaeological resources. Whenever possible,
while ensuring that due respect is shown for we have actively involved descendants in our
their dead. Through working with tribal mem- research projects. Such collaborations are
bers over the years, my colleagues and I have enormously rewarding, not only on a personal
developed a cooperative arrangement through level, but also professionally, because of the
which Chumash ancestral remains and associ- important insights descendants can provide
ated burial objects are being repatriated from into the history of their culture.
other universities and museums to a safe keep- Not all groups have religious traditions that
ing place at my campus. This is highly desir- can be easily built upon to allow scientific re-
able from the perspective of descendants search conducted on the remains of the dead.
because of our location near the center of the The strong objections ultraorthodox Jewish
area historically occupied by the tribe. We have have to any skeletal studies already have been
constructed a specially designed subterranean mentioned (Watzman, 1996c). As the claims of
ossuary to receive these remains as part of the Hopi and the Navajo to archaeological remains
construction of our new social sciences and hu- from the ancient Anasazi culture show, it is
manities building. This ossuary was designed easy for the control of bones and burial sites to
through consultation with both federally and become enmeshed in larger battles over unre-
non-federally recognized tribal members to en- lated economic and social issues concerning
sure that it meets their spiritual needs, and also the control of land and natural resources, envi-
solves the practical problem of providing secu- ronmental preservation, and so on. This of
rity against future disturbance that would be course greatly complicates the problem of
unavailable in an unguarded reburial area. The finding a basis for compromise. Sometimes
ossuary also makes it possible for scientific re- collaboration with descendants may be diffi-
search on these collections to continue under cult or impossible owing to antagonism toward
the supervision of descendants so that future Western science, and strong traditional beliefs
generations can gain a deeper understanding of about the retention of a person's spirit withir
the history and accomplishments of the tribe. their bones. Some native Hawaiians, for exam-
Mutually acceptable solutions such as this, ple, believe that people possess mana , which-
which balance spiritual and practical concerns after death resides in the bones, and have ar-
of descendants against the important historical gued in court that the publication of informa-
information skeletal research can provide, are tion about skeletal collections is offensive and will steal the manoftheirancestor (Kan
the outcome of personal relationships, mutual
REFERENCES 31
hele, 1993). Many Plains Indian tribes also plea. In another case, we used skeletal evidence
have strong beliefs about the residence of souls to successfully refute a grave robber's attempt
in their ancestral remains. This, along with an- to exonerate himself by claiming that the
imosity stemming from racism, genocidal at- Native American remains he excavated were
tacks by the U.S. military, cultural suppression from a person of European ancestry, and thus
in boarding schools, and economic marginal- not protected by the state's Native American
ization on reservations makes the prospects for graves protection law. Through the process of
the preservation of skeletal collections from working on such cases, I have seen the views of
most of the Plains area bleak (Ubelaker, people who once saw little value in skeletal re-
1994:395). search change dramatically as they increas-
In situations such as these it may be impos- ingly became aware of many important insights
sible to obtain a compromise that allows skele- skeletal studies can give us into the lives of
tal research to continue. However, from the those who have gone before us.
personal experiences I have had in working When skeletal collections are lost owing to
with many different groups of indigenous peo- our inability to find equitable solutions that
ple, once the shroud of mystery associated with balance the concerns of modern descendants
what osteologists actually do is removed against the need to preserve collections so that
through direct contacts between people, it is of- future generations will have substantive infor-
ten possible to find a foundation upon which mation about the past, it is perhaps of some so-
mutual understanding and cooperation can be lace to remember that we live in an entropic
built. The most obvious basis for developing world in which the natural processes of decay
such collaborations is in the identification and and disintegration and the economic and social
analysis of ancient human remains that are in- realities of modern life continuously conspire
advertently disturbed through erosion, for ex- to destroy the faint traces our ancestors have
ample, or during construction projects. In such left for us in the archaeological record. We can-
situations, the value of close collaboration be- not turn this tide. All we can do is work to pre-
t ween osteologists and descendants is obvious. serve as much of the physical evidence of our
After it has been decided that remains are in- common heritage as possible. Those ancestral
deed human, the issue of whether or not they remains and the facts about the history of our
are modern (and thus possibly relevant to a species that they reveal will be our legacy to
forensic investigation) needs to be resolved. If future generations.
they are indeed ancient, the question of which
modern group of people they are affiliated
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CHAPTER 1

I NTRODUCTION range of value systems and religious beliefs

political parties to maintain control of the symbolic concerns of modern descendants

Hatch E. 1983. Cultures and Morality: The

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