The Value Of Human Skeletal Remains
In the ongoing debate over the disposition and scientific analysis of ancient human remains in museum collections, there is a tendency for the ethical issues surrounding skeletal research and the maintenance of skeletal collections to be reduced to simplistic oppositions: science vs. religion, right vs. wrong, and so on. Although framing the complex social issues underlying the debate in this way may be politically expedient, it is counterproductive for anyone seeking a solution that balances the concerns of descendants against those of the scientific community.
From my brief discussion of the evolution of beliefs about human remains, it is obvious that the details of the rituals people have devised for the treatment of the dead have varied enormously among the cultures of the world through time. The practice of funeral rites by friends and relatives and the use of a method of disposing of the body seen to be human universals, but beyond that, there is little uniformity (Brown, 1991; Murdock, 1945). This diversity of beliefs about how the dead should be treated poses ethical dilemmas for bioarchaeol-ogists when their scientific work conflicts with the beliefs of the descendants of the people whose remains they study.
One approach to resolving disputes over research on ancient skeletal remains is to view such disagreements as cultural issues arising from competing value systems (Goldstein and Kintigh, 1990). Conceiving of disputes over the treatment of the dead as products of conflicting value systems avoids polemics and self-righteous posturing in which each side battles for moral superiority and instead promotes communication and mutual understanding. This can eventually result in the discovery of solutions that are consistent with the value systems of both parties in the dispute.
The only justification for the study of skeletal remains from earlier human populations is that such research yields information that is useful to modern people. Although the value of skeletal research seems self-evident to the people who conduct it, many indigenous people feel such work is not only useless, but also extremely harmful because of the damage it does to them and the spirits of their ancestors (Sadongei and Cash Cash, 2007). This conflict between the values scientists and descendant groups attach to human remains is central to the most important ethical dilemmas bioarch-aeologists face. Since mutual understanding is a prerequisite for finding a common ground between these apparently incommensurable world views, it is useful to briefly describe the values scientists and descendant groups attach to ancient human remains.
Bioarchaeologists focus their research on ancient human skeletal remains, not out of idle scientific curiosity, but instead because they believe that the information contained within the remains of our ancestors is of great value to modern people (Larsen and Walker, 2004). Human skeletal remains are a unique source of information on the genetic and physiological responses our ancestors made to the challenges posed by past natural and sociocultural environments. Consequently, they provide an extremely valuable adaptive perspective on the history of our species.
Most of what we know about our recent history is based on inferences derived through analysis of artifacts, documents, oral histories, and other products of human cultural activity. Because of their symbolic content, such cultural artifacts are difficult to interpret and often consistent with multiple, sometimes contradictory views of the past. The subjective aspects of attempting to interpret cultural artifacts, from the perspective of our current cultural milieu are well recognized: Historical works often reveal more about the cultural values and political biases of the historian than they do about the reality of the historical event being described. All historians are products of the culture in which they live, and they are always selective in what they report.
Because of its biological basis in the physiological processes of growth, development, and acclimatization to environmental change, the information about interactions with past environments encoded in human remains provides an extremely valuable comparative basis for evaluating interpretations of the past based on artifacts, documents, and other culture-based sources. The historical data provided by skeletal studies are of such great value because the methodological problems inherent in extracting evidence from a skeleton are completely different from those historians face when they attempt to interpret the historical significance of the cultural products with which they work. The only way we can reduce the cultural biases that distort our understanding of past events is through collecting a diversity of evidence from sources that are susceptible to different types of interpretative error. The greater the diversity of the evidence we have about the past, the easier it is to rule out alternative interpretations that are unlikely to reflect actual events. By using a series of data sources that, standing alone, would be open to many different interpretations, it is in this way possible to triangulate on what really happened in the past.
The unique perspective that skeletal evidence provides on the history of our species makes it a potent weapon against cultural relativists and historical revisionists who view the past as a source of raw materials they can exploit to refashion history into whatever narrative is currently considered au courant or politically expedient. In some schools of postmodernist thought, history is viewed as a symbolic construct devoid of any objective truth: All we are left with is an endless process of constructing conflicting narratives about the past that are all of equal merit or are only of merit because they are different. In some rarified corners of the humanities, the possibility of knowing with certainty that voluminously documented historical events such as the Holocaust actually occurred is actively debated (Braun, 1994; Friedman, 1998; Jordan, 1995; Kellner, 1994). In the world of these theorists, people interested in discovering what happened in the Holocaust are doomed to an academic life of continuously revisualizing and recontex-tualizing subjective impressions of subjective descriptions of the slaughter of millions of people into new, contradictory, and from their perspective, more meaningful imaginations of the past.
In contrast to the symbolic problems inherent in historical reconstructions based on written records and oral histories, human skeletal remains provide a direct source of evidence about the lives and deaths of ancient and modern people, that is, at a fundamental level, free from cultural bias (Walker, 1996, 1997). The skeletons of the people buried row upon row at concentration camps such as Terezin, the racks of skulls from the Cambodian killing fields at Tuol Sleng Prison, and the cut marks on the skeletons of the hundreds of massacred prehistoric Native Americans unceremoniously buried at the Crow Creek site in South Dakota speak volumes about real historical events that ended the lives of real people.
In certain respects, bones do not lie. To give a specific example from my own research, the presence of lesions indicative of severe, repeated physical abuse in the skeletons of children murdered by their parents says something very specific about a history of traumatic experiences that a child suffered during its short life (Walker, 2001; Walker et al., 1997). Although multiple "narratives" can be constructed based on the presence of such lesions (the child was extraordinarily clumsy or accident prone, the child's parents repeatedly beat him over a prolonged period until he died, and so on) at a fundamental level, such skeletal evidence says something indisputable about a physical interaction that took place between the dead child and his or her physical environment. Unlike written records or oral histories, human remains are not culture-dependent symbolic constructs. Instead they provide an extraordinarily detailed material record of actual physical interactions that occurred between our ancestors and their natural and sociocultural environments. As such, human remains are extremely valuable sources of evidence for reconstructing what actually happened in the past.
This esoteric view that bioarchaeologists hold concerning the central role that collections of human skeletal remains play in helping us to obtain an objective view of history is not widespread. Most of the world's population views human remains with a mixture of morbid fascination and dread because they serve as such vivid reminders of one's own mortality and impending death. The symbolic saliency of directly confronting a dead person has been deftly exploited for a diversity of religious, political, and economic purposes. Throughout the world, in many different settings, human remains are placed on public display and used in ways designed to foster group cohesion and legitimize religious or political authority. During times of social instability, it is common for these same remains to be destroyed or humiliated to weaken and disrupt the group solidarity they once fostered (Cantwell, 1990). The controversy of the continued display of Lenin's remains in Red Square and the disposition of the recently discovered remains of Czar Nicholas II and his family provide good examples of how human remains can be used as tools to advance or suppress political ideas and facilitate or disrupt social cohesion (Caryl, 1998; Fenyvesi, 1997).
The strong symbolic power of human remains has encouraged people to devise an amazing number of uses for them. Throughout the world, displays of human remains are among the most effective tools for luring people into museums (Brooks and Rumsey, 2007). At the British Museum, for example, postcards of mummies rival the Rosetta Stone in public popularity (Beard, 1992). In many places displays of human remains are such popular tourist attractions that they have become the mainstays of local economies. The
Museo de los Momias in Mexico, where the naturally mummified bodies of poor people who could not afford to purchase permanent graves are on display, is touted as Mexico's second most popular museum, bested only by the anthropological museum in Mexico City (Osmond, 1998). Two similar examples are the awe-inspiring creativity of displays of thousands of human bones disinterred from a cemetery near Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic and in the Church of the Capuchins in Rome (Fig. 1.1).
In some cases the symbolic value ofretaining human remains for display is sufficient to override religious sanctions against it. Medieval Chinese Ch'an Buddhists practiced mummification of eminent priests as demonstrations of the relationship between spiritual attainment and the incorruptibility of the body even though they espoused a religious doctrine that accorded little value to the corpse. A similar example is the recent decision that the value of the display of bones from Khmer Rouge victims at the Tuol Sleng Prison Museum as evidence of the Cambodian genocide outweighed Buddhist religious beliefs that mandate cremation (Erlanger, 1988; Peters, 1995). The denial of burial in Christian countries as a form of posthumous punishment and object lesson for the living has already been mentioned. In England, the heads of people such as Oliver Cromwell were displayed on poles erected on the roof of the Great Stone Gate of London Bridge, and gibbets containing the rotting bodies of famous pirates such as Captain Kidd were strategically placed along the banks of the Thames to greet sailors as they returned from the sea. During the nineteenth century, the heads of Miguel Hidalgo and three other leaders of the Mexican war of independence met a similar fate when they hung on public display in cages for 10 years as grim reminders of the folly of revolution. Ironically, these same skulls of Mexico's founding fathers have recently been resurrected and again put on public display for the opposite purpose: They rest next to each other under glass on red velvet in a dimly lit crypt where they remind
- 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.
school children of the heroism of the country's founders (Osmond, 1998).
As is illustrated by the case for Hidalgo's skull, the strong symbolic value of human remains endows those who control the remains with a powerful tool that can be used to vividly express multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings. Because of this great symbolic power, it is not surprising that issues surrounding the control, treatment, and disposition of human remains pose some of the most vexing ethical dilemmas skeletal biologists face. Bioarchaeologists do not view human remains primarily as symbols. Instead they value them as sources of historical evidence that are key to understanding what really happened during the biological and cultural evolution of our species. This lack of concern with symbolic issues is in stark contrast to the richness of the symbolic connotations human skeletons have for most people.
This conflict in worldviews is especially acute in areas of the world that were subjected to European colonization. In North America,
Hawaii, and Australia, where the indigenous people suffered the greatest devastation at the hands of European colonists, ancient human remains have assumed great significance as symbols of cultural integrity and colonial oppression (Sadongei and Cash Cash, 2007:98). In this postcolonial world, gaining control over ancestral remains is increasingly considered essential to the survival and revitali-zation of indigenous cultures.
That the views of indigenous people concerning this issue have changed dramatically during the past 40 years is amply illustrated by archaeological reports that describe the enthusiastic participation of Native Americans in the excavation of burials, some of whose study by bioarchaeologists is currently under dispute (Benson and Bowers, 1997; Brew, 1941; Fewkes, 1898; Hewett, 1953; Hrdlicka, 1930a, 1930b, 1931; Hurt et al., 1962; Judd, 1968; Neuman, 1975; Roberts, 1931; Smith, 1971; Smith et al., 1966). As late as the 1960s, Inuit people in the Northwest Territory of Canada, with whom I worked, seemed little concerned about the excavation of ancient skeletal remains. In fact, they were extremely cordial to the members of the expedition I was on and assisted us in any way they could. Although they expressed mild concerns about carrying human skeletons in their boats, they otherwise were supportive of and expressed considerable interest in our bioarchaeological work.
To comprehend the urgency of the current concerns Native Americans have about the treatment of their ancestral remains, it is necessary to understand the magnitude of the recent disruptions of their cultures. Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, systematic attempts began to be made to separate Native American children from their families, suppress their Native identities, and inculcate them with Christian values (Ellis, 1996a; Lomawaima, 1993). Simultaneously, the isolation that formerly characterized life on the remote reservations in marginal areas that the government relegated to them began to break down because of the development of interstate highways, radio, television, and the intrusions of tourists. These developments have had such a devastating effect on the transmission of traditional beliefs and practices that the remnants of earlier times preserved in museums have increasingly become a cultural focus. Control over these collections is an important political issue for Native Americans because, by gaining control over the biological and cultural remains of their ancestors, they can begin to reassert their cultural identity within the dominant Euro-American culture.
When viewed within this context of cultural marginalization and repression, it is easy to see why many indigenous people see little value in what to them are the very nebulous goals of bioarchaeologists. Zimmerman (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989) presents evidence supporting the depth of Indian concern about the retention of museum collections. He cites an unpublished survey that John S. Sigstad conducted in 1972 of Indian tribes in the BIA Aberdeen region. All respondents agreed that human remains in museums should be reburied, 95% indicated bones should not be displayed in museums, and only 35% of the respondents believed that human remains should be excavated for scientific research (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).
Some indigenous people have the erroneous belief that only the remains of their ancestors are studied and cite this as a reflection of the racist attitudes of the European colonists who robbed them of their land (Tobias, 1991; Vizenor, 1986). They feel that such research degrades them by singling them out to be "made fun of and looked at as novelties" (Mihesuah, 1996; Walters, 1989). Bioarchaeol-ogists respond to this charge by pointing out the vast collections of non-Native-American skeletal remains in European museums and by arguing that it would be racist not to have collections of Native-American remains in New World museums, since this would imply that knowledge of the history of the indigenous people of the New World had nothing to contribute to the understanding of our common past (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).
Some indigenous people reject the epistem-ology of science, at least as it applies to their history and cultural affairs, and instead they prefer to view the past as it is revealed through traditional ways of knowing such as oral history, legend, myth, and appeal to the authority of revered leaders. For people with this perspective, scientific research directed toward documenting the past is not only superfluous, but also potentially culturally subversive, because of the capacity of scientific evidence to conflict with traditional beliefs about the past and, in this way, undermine the authority of traditional religious leaders. From this perspective, scientific investigations into the history of indigenous cultures are simply another manifestation of the attempts of an oppressive imperialist colonial power to control and weaken the belief systems of indigenous people so that they will be easier to exploit (Bray, 1995; Dirlik, 1996; Riding In, 1996).
In academia, this position clearly resonates with radical postmodernist theorists of the humanities who believe that reconstructing history as an objective reality is a hopeless endeavor and instead argue that history is a symbolic weapon that ethical people should use to help the marginal political and cultural constituencies of the world in their struggles against the holders of power (Hodder et al., 1995).
This tension between traditional and scientific views of the past has recently been brought into sharp focus through the controversy over the disposition of the 9300-year-old human remains found at the Kennewick site on the banks of the Columbia River in Washington (Hastings and Sampson, 1997; Lemonick, 1996; Morell, 1998; Petit, 1998; Preston, 1997; Slayman, 1997; Watkins, 2004). Scientists who have examined these remains say they possess characteristics unlike those of modern Native Americans. They believe that research into reasons for this difference has the potential to make an important contribution to our understanding of the history of humankind. Members of the five Native- American tribes that have claimed the skeleton, on the other hand, believe that the question of the cultural affiliation of this individual has already been resolved by their elders who tell them that they have lived in the area in which the skeleton was found since the beginning of creation. The complexity of this dispute increased further when members of the Asutru Folk Assembly, a traditional European pagan religion, sued for the right to use scientific research to decide whether this individual is one of their ancestors. They claim that, "It's not an accident that he came to us at this time and place ... Our job is to listen to (the bones) and hear what they have to say" (Lee, 1997).
Modern indigenous people often frame such disputes over the power to control the interpretation of tribal history in spiritual terms. It is a common pan-Indian religious belief that all modern Native Americans are spiritually linked to all other Indian people living and dead (Walters, 1989). Another widely held belief is that space is spherical and time is cyclical (Clark, 1997). All living Indians thus have a responsibility for the spiritual well-being of their ancestors that requires them to assure that their ancestors are buried in the ground where they can be reintegrated into the earth and complete the circle of life and death (Bray, 1995; Halfe, 1989). Contemporary Native Americans who hold these beliefs argue that, so long as ancestral spirits are suffering because their bones are not buried in the earth, living people will continue to suffer a myriad of adverse consequences. Thus, any activity inconsistent with reburial, such as excavation, study, museum curation, and storage, is considered an act of desecration and disrespect. For indigenous people with such views, there is no middle ground on which scientific research can be conducted on human skeletal remains and associated artifacts. These remains are of great spiritual and psychological importance, and their reburial is required to heal the wounds of colonial oppression (Emspak, 1995; Murray and Allen, 1995; Sadongei and Cash Cash, 2007).
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