They Sell Skulls Online?! A Review of Internet Sales of Human Skulls on eBay and the Laws in Place to Restrict Sales

Abstract

Internet sales of human remains occur despite the existence of laws prohibiting such action in most jurisdictions. The most popular public platform for online sales, eBay, allows users to postskeletal material for sale, largely anonymously and without much fear of legal repercussions. This survey of skeletal sales was conducted 10 years after the first article published about online human remains sales. A review of current laws reveals that, while many states have laws that restrict any sale of human remains, those laws have questionable deterrent effect. Assessing the skeletal material posted for sale provides law enforcement agencies with a necessary starting point to curtail the sale of human remains through enforcement of existing laws. Ultimately, the goal is to stem the commodification of such items and to recover skeletal material, especially that which may be of archaeological or forensic significance, and provide the proper final disposition for such material.

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

“…Irfan 2015; ICE 2011; Wockner and Erviani 2016; O'Connor 2013; Radio Australia 2012). However, only very rarely have e-commerce platforms taken action in response to exposure and public outcry (Halling and Seidemann 2016;Kim 2012). Like other categories of licit and illicit commerce facilitated by social media, today's online market for human remains is facilitated by platform developers and actively manipulated by its users so as to exchange the real remains of the dead for money in an allegedly safe and "hidden" virtual space.…”

Bones of Contention: The Online Trade in Archaeological, Ethnographic and Anatomical Human Remains on Social Media Platforms

“…The trade in human remains online has not gone entirely unnoticed by the public. In addition to the recent ban by eBay, primarily in response to Halling and Seidemann (2016) (see Vergano 2016 for discussion), a few other instances of attempted "creative" sales or auctions by other platforms have been exposed (e.g. Killgrove 2016a).…”

“…Killgrove 2016a). Only occasionally have the e-commerce platforms displaying these specimens taken action in response to exposure and public outcry (Halling and Seidemann 2016).…”

Fleshing Out the Bones: Studying the Human Remains Trade with Tensorflow and Inception

“…The modern online trade in anatomical, ethnographic and archaeological human remains, especially using social media and e-commerce platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Etsy, Marktplaats, Amazon.com, etc., is becoming documented and exposed (e.g. Huxley & Finnegan 2004;Huffer & Chappell 2014;Halling & Seidemann 2016;Huffer et al in press). In our first paper on data mining the human remains trade on Instagram (Huffer & Graham 2017), we scraped several thousand posts to explore and map this well-connected network of collectors and dealers.…”