Stories, Skulls, and Colonial Collections

Abstract

The essay explores the hypothesis of colonial collecting processes involving the active addition of the colonial context and historical past to museum objects through the production of short stories. It examines the emergent historicity of collections through a focus on the "histories" that museum workers and colonial agents have been attaching to scientific collections of human skulls. Drawing on the notions of collection trajectory and historiographical work, it offers an alternative perspective from which to approach the creation of singular histories and individual archives for objects in collections.

Specimens as individuals: Four interventions and recommendations for great ape skeletal collections research and curation

“…Museum collections are in the midst of a reckoning regarding their colonial, racist, and patriarchal legacies, facing questions like how to best curate, research, and respect cultural objects and human remains. 29,43,64,65 However, no comparable discussion centers on nonhuman primate skeletal remains. While great ape remains are neither human nor artifacts, there is a similar imperative to reckon with inherited extractivist legacies and to envision a more ethical future for these remains.…”

Colonialism and narratives of human origins in Asia and Africa

“…and Aleš Hrdlička let their needs be known to potential suppliers (Broca, 1865;Hrdlička, 1904). These included colonial administrators, explorers, doctors and especially members of the military who were instructed to collect bodies from hospitals, battlefields (after massacres from quelling uprisings or rebellions in the colonial states) and graveyards-all in the name of racial science (Dias, 2012;Roque, 2011). Roque (2011) compellingly argues that the demand for bodies from India, Indonesia, Macau, Timor, Taiwan, and other colonies throughout Asia and Oceania by British, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch scientists, was not simply to increase scientific knowledge about human variation.…”

Serious Enquiries Only, Please: Ethical Issues Raised by the Online Human Remains Trade

“…This practice has deep roots as explorers, government officials and missionaries visited once remote peoples and began to collect, trade for, or acquire by other means, modified and unmodified human remains (e.g. Hose 1994;Roque 2010Roque , 2011Gosden and Knowles 2001;Legassick and Rassool 2000) but today's e-commerce has only expanded collector's reach. To date, very few nations or US states have introduced restrictions on the ownership, sale or transit of human remains (e.g.…”