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Grappling with the Legacies of Anthro-Cast: The Work of Bones in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
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I consider the power of “slow archaeology” in a study of the Huntington Anatomical Collection, focusing on Irish immigrants who lived and worked in New York City over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I argue that normative bioarchaeological categories and methods cannot fully account for the varied life histories of persons in the collection. Instead, I turn to the tenets of slow archaeology to move between scales of analysis and material traces. With a slow approach, embodied experiences of labor are highlighted and discourses about laborers are challenged. A slow approach seeks to recover the lived experiences of individuals exploited in life and made anonymous in death and is one potential way toward a more ethical bioarchaeology.
This article examines how openly sharing data online can continue the dehumanizing work of 19th century “collectors” who stole the bodies of colonized peoples. It addresses the ongoing controversies at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (“Penn Museum“), regarding the interlinked weaponization of over one thousand crania used by racial scientist Samuel George Morton, and the remains of two Black children murdered by the police in the 1985 MOVE bombing, and asks, how can descendant communities regain their kin and take control of the data the museum has extracted from them? And how can scholars and other heritage workers within colonial institutions support them?
Extensive discourse surrounds the ethics of human skeletal research and curation, but there has yet to be a similar discussion of the treatment of great ape skeletal remains, despite the clear interest in their ethical treatment when alive. Here we trace the history of apes who were killed and collected for natural history museums during the early 20th century and showcase how the guiding research questions of the colonial era continue to influence scholarship. We discuss best practices for improving industry and academic standards of research on, and the curation of, ape remains. The suggested interventions involve restoring individual identity and narrative to great apes while engaging with contextual reflexivity and decolonial theory. The resulting recommendations include contextualizing the individual, piecing individuals back together, challenging/questioning the captive‐wild dichotomy, and collaborative international conversations. Our objective is to encourage a conversation regarding ethical and theoretical considerations in great ape skeletal remains research.
We describe a process of restitution of nine unethically acquired human skeletons to their families, together with attempts at redress. Between 1925–1927 C.E., the skeletonised remains of nine San or Khoekhoe people, eight of them known-in-life, were removed from their graves on the farm Kruisrivier, near Sutherland in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. They were donated to the Anatomy Department at the University of Cape Town. This was done without the knowledge or permission of their families. The donor was a medical student who removed the remains from the labourers’ cemetery on his family farm. Nearly 100 years later, the remains are being returned to their community, accompanied by a range of community-driven interdisciplinary historical, archaeological and analytical (osteobiographic, craniofacial, ancient DNA, stable isotope) studies to document, as far as possible, their lives and deaths. The restitution process began by contacting families living in the same area with the same surnames as the deceased. The restitution and redress process prioritises the descendant families’ memories, wishes and desire to understand the situation, and learn more about their ancestors. The descendant families have described the process as helping them to reconnect with their ancestors. A richer appreciation of their ancestors’ lives, gained in part from scientific analyses, culminating with reburial, is hoped to aid the descendant families and wider community in [re-]connecting with their heritage and culture, and contribute to restorative justice, reconciliation and healing while confronting a traumatic historical moment. While these nine individuals were exhumed as specimens, they will be reburied as people.
Artefacts made from stones, bones and teeth are fundamental to our understanding of human subsistence strategies, behaviour and culture in the Pleistocene. Although these resources are plentiful, it is impossible to associate artefacts to specific human individuals¹ who can be morphologically or genetically characterized, unless they are found within burials, which are rare in this time period. Thus, our ability to discern the societal roles of Pleistocene individuals based on their biological sex or genetic ancestry is limited2–5. Here we report the development of a non-destructive method for the gradual release of DNA trapped in ancient bone and tooth artefacts. Application of the method to an Upper Palaeolithic deer tooth pendant from Denisova Cave, Russia, resulted in the recovery of ancient human and deer mitochondrial genomes, which allowed us to estimate the age of the pendant at approximately 19,000–25,000 years. Nuclear DNA analysis identifies the presumed maker or wearer of the pendant as a female individual with strong genetic affinities to a group of Ancient North Eurasian individuals who lived around the same time but were previously found only further east in Siberia. Our work redefines how cultural and genetic records can be linked in prehistoric archaeology.
Engaging with the concepts of slow violence and landscapes of impunity, this article traces the United States’ long history of state-sanctioned violence against Black women that affects both their physical and mental health. The extent of this abuse is revealed by examining the skeletal and archival remains of Black women who died during the Progressive Era in New York City. The same methods of marginalization and punishment have consistently been repeated and repurposed throughout the country’s history. This violence is perpetrated not only by the state, but also by scientists who would argue for racial and gender inferiority, therefore bolstering false assumptions. Examining this history is a crucial step in denaturalizing structures that harm Black women’s health and safety.
Archaeology in 2021 was characterized by a continued call to use the tools of the discipline to document the violence of settler colonialism in the past and present, pushing anthropology to reckon with its own role in perpetuating historical trauma. The tension between disciplinary reflection and reform was most clearly articulated in the use of archaeological geophysics to detect the unmarked graves of incarcerated Indigenous children who died at residential and boarding schools in Canada and the United States. The highly publicized investigation of these schools has brought renewed attention to issues of repatriation and historical reclamation for many communities impacted by settler colonialism. These discussions have reverberated throughout the discipline, prompting revisions to the Society for American Archaeology's “Statement Concerning the Treatment of Human Remains,” reopening conversations around an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and informing debates around the ethics of DNA research. These conversations are part of a larger movement toward decolonizing the field by using archaeological methods to explore marginalized histories and support communities most impacted by the violences of settler colonialism.
Using 3D scanning and printing technology for cultural heritage creates a new group of opportunities for preservation and access, while also causing a shift in how we view the ownership of this heritage. This article will examine this issue from four angles: how 3D technology plays a role for heritage in danger; how it allows having multiple copies at once in such a way that affects repatriation dynamics; how it creates further copyright questions; and finally how it causes a new layer of ownership over the scans. This article will argue that 3D technology does not solve repatriation issues but might create new ownership in the 3D scans through copyright law.
Over the past 20 years, collaboration has become an essential aspect of archaeological practice in North America. In paying increased attention to the voices of descendant and local communities, archaeologists have become aware of the persistent injustices these often marginalized groups face. Building on growing calls for a responsive and engaged cultural heritage praxis, this forum article brings together a group of Native and non-Native scholars working at the nexus of history, ethnography, archaeology, and law in order to grapple with the role of archaeology in advancing social justice. Contributors to this article touch on a diverse range of critical issues facing Indigenous communities in the United States, including heritage law, decolonization, foodways, community-based participatory research, and pedagogy. Uniting these commentaries is a shared emphasis on research practices that promote Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. In drawing these case studies together, we articulate a sovereignty-based model of social justice that facilitates Indigenous control over cultural heritage in ways that address their contemporary needs and goals.
Advancements in digital technology have conquered a place in cultural heritage. The widespread use of three-dimensional scanners in bioanthropology have increased the production of 3D digital replicas of human bones that are freely distributed online. However, ethical considerations about such 3D models have not reached Portuguese society, making it impossible to assess their societal impact and people’s perception of how these models are created and used. Therefore, Portuguese residents were asked to take part in an online survey. The ratio of male to female participants was 0.5:1 in 312 contributors. The age ranged between 18 and 69 years. The majority had a higher education degree. Only 43% had seen a 3D model, and 43% considered the 3D replicas the same as real bone. Also, 87% would be willing to allow their skeleton and family members to be digitalized after death, and 64% advocated the controlled dissemination of replicas through registration and login and context description association (84%). Overall, the results suggest agreement in disseminating 3D digital replicas of human bones. On a final note, the limited number of participants may be interpreted as a lack of interest in the topic or, more importantly, a low self-assessment of their opinion on the subject.
Paleogenomics - the study of ancient genomes - has made significant contributions, especially to our understanding of the evolutionary history of humans. This knowledge influx has been a direct result of the coupling of next-generation sequencing with improved methods for DNA recovery and analysis of ancient samples. The appeal of ancient DNA studies in the popular media coupled with the trend for such work to be published in “high impact” journals has driven the amassing of ancestral human remains from global collections, often with limited to no engagement or involvement of local researchers and communities. This practice in the paleogenomics literature has led to limited representation of researchers from the Global South at the research design and subsequent stages. Additionally, Indigenous and descendant communities are often alienated from popular and academic narratives that both involve and impact them, sometimes adversely. While some countries have safeguards against ‘helicopter science’, such as federally regulated measures to protect their biocultural heritage, there is variable oversight in others with regard to sampling and exportation of human remains for destructive research, and differing requirements for accountability or consultation with local researchers and communities. These disparities reveal stark contrasts and gaps in regional policies that lend themselves to persistent colonial practices. While essential critiques and conversations in this sphere are taking place, these are primarily guided through the lens of US-based heritage legislation such as the Native American Graves and Protection Act (NAGPRA). In this article, we aim to expand the scope of ongoing conversations by taking into account diverse regional contexts and challenges drawing from our own research experiences in the field of paleogenomics. We emphasize that true collaborations involve knowledge sharing, capacity building, mutual respect, and equitable participation, all of which take time and the implementation of sustainable research methods; amass-and-publish strategy is simply incompatible with this ethos.
Anatomical practice has arguably one of the most ethically challenging histories in the medical sciences. Among the oldest scientific disciplines in medicine, dissection of the human body for scientific purposes occurred as early as the third century Before the Common Era. Throughout the history of anatomical practice, human dissection has occurred in ways that cross the line from progressing medical science to violating the sanctity of the human body. The dissection of the human body creates ethical dilemmas which stem from the need for anatomical science to gain medical knowledge in juxtaposition with prevailing religious and moral views surrounding anatomy as a threat to the sanctity of the human body. This article examines the unethical history of human dissection throughout the ages and explores the rationale behind the unethical practices. In addition, this article explores imperative modern day ethical standards in anatomy including, the ethical handling of human bodies, respecting human life, and ensuring informed consent for dissection of bodies that are donated. Finally, this article explores the question of which ethical prism we should use when dealing with anatomy collections or works of the past. Learning both the history of unethical practices in anatomy and the rationale behind them is imperative so that the discipline can prepare for an ethical, diverse, and inclusive future. This article provides a foundation for understanding the evolution of ethics in anatomical practice and is a valuable resource for students and anatomists alike.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has brought to the public eye longstanding issues of social and racial injustice which have permeated the experiences of individuals of African ancestry in the United States and abroad for centuries. Motivated by a desire to disassemble a framework of systemic racism, the BLM movement has infiltrated numerous social and political arenas including the sciences, demanding change. The impact of the BLM movement is evident in the attention recently garnered by protests of museum skeletal collections' acquisition and handling of African/African American human remains. It is from this vantage point that we explore the ethical issues pervasive within United States skeletal collections and forensically relevant issues surrounding the unclaimed decedents of marginalized populations; colonial/imperial ideological formations, which construct and sustain power differentials in anatomization; and conceive of a path forward that prioritizes personhood.
Universities and museums must catalogue the remains of Black Americans in their collections, and pause research pending consultation with descendant communities. Universities and museums must catalogue the remains of Black Americans in their collections, and pause research pending consultation with descendant communities.
This book explores how the social sciences became entangled with the global Cold War. While duly recognizing the realities of nation states, national power, and national aspirations, the studies gathered here open up new lines of transnational investigation. Considering developments in a wide array of fields – anthropology, development studies, economics, education, political science, psychology, science studies, and sociology – that involved the movement of people, projects, funding, and ideas across diverse national contexts, this volume pushes scholars to rethink certain fundamental points about how we should understand – and thus how we should study – Cold War social science itself.
Mark Solovey is Associate Professor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Christian Dayé is a sociologist at the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Unit of Graz University of Technology, Austria.
This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which the authors participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology. The online salon reflected on the social unrest that gripped the United States in the spring of 2020, gauged the history and conditions leading up to it, and considered its rippling throughout the disciplines of archaeology and heritage preservation. Within the forum, the authors go beyond reporting the generative conversation that took place in June by presenting a road map for an antiracist archaeology in which antiblackness is dismantled.
This article explores the complex dynamics involved in making African Diaspora histories and cultures visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting traditionally viewed as white public heritage space. In response to the 400th anniversary of the forcible arrival of Africans in Virginia, archaeologists and heritage professionals at Jamestown are engaging the local African American descendant community in collective knowledge production centered around Angela, one of the first African women that lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. This article explores the production of dominant histories, alternative interpretations of the (colonial) past, and relationships between heritage sites and local descendant communities.
The study of environmental DNA can reveal information about the history and presence of Indigenous communities on their lands — potentially even inadvertently. Better engagement with the ethical aspects of environmental DNA research is required in the field as a whole, and especially for researchers working on Indigenous lands.
The collection and analysis of 3D digital data is a rapidly growing field in archaeology, anthropology, and forensics. Even though the 3D scanning of human remains in archaeology has been conducted for over 10 years, it is still frequently considered as a new field. Despite this, the availability of 3D scanning equipment and the number of studies employing these methods are increasing rapidly, and it is arguably damaging to the validity of this field to continue to consider these methods new and therefore not subject to the same standardisations as other researches. This paper considers the current issues regarding the lack of standardisation in the methods, ethics,and ownership of 3D digital data with a focus on human remains research.The aim of this paper is to stimulate further research and discussion,allowing this field to develop, improving the quality and value of future research.
In the first half of the twentieth century, most of Fernando Pó's contract workers came from societies in southeastern Nigeria which had been heavily impacted by the transatlantic and internal slave trades. These contract workers were recruited by a new generation of labor recruiters, dispatched co-vertly by Spanish imperial employers, through a form of kidnapping known as panya. Panya was the largest labor smuggling and trafficking network in colonial West Africa, bringing tens of thousands of migrants to long and obligatory contracts on Fernando Pó. In contrast to scholars who have interpreted this history as a holdover from the pre-colonial period, this article argues that panya arose from the contractual order of Spanish imperial rule. Extensive archival research reveals the voices of those caught in the warp of post-abolition colonial labor regimes, in order to rethink the passage from the pre-colonial slave trade to imperialism within West African history. Using a series of vivid and precise petitions submitted by those who found themselves on the island of Fernando Pó, the article shows how these sources contain the potential to reconceptual-ize the disjunctures between enslavement in the slave trade and the recruitment of contract labor.
A new era in palaeomicrobiology: prospects for ancient dental calculus as a long-term record of the human oral microbiome The field of palaeomicrobiology is dramatically expanding thanks to recent advances in high-throughput biomolecular sequencing, which allows unpre-cedented access to the evolutionary history and ecology of human-associated and environmental microbes. Recently, human dental calculus has been shown to be an abundant, nearly ubiquitous, and long-term reservoir of the ancient oral microbiome, preserving not only microbial and host biomolecules but also dietary and environmental debris. Modern investigations of native human microbiota have demonstrated that the human microbiome plays a central role in health and chronic disease, raising questions about changes in microbial ecology, diversity and function through time. This paper explores the current state of ancient oral microbiome research and discusses successful applications, methodological challenges and future possibilities in elucidating the intimate evolutionary relationship between humans and their microbes.
Although ethical reforms in biological anthropology have gained ground in recent years, there is still a scarcity of ethical standards for work involving historical documented collections (HDCs) at US museums and universities. These collections of deceased individuals were created in the late 19th to mid‐20th centuries under anatomy laws that targeted socially marginalized communities and allowed for the dissection of these individuals without their consent. Due to the extensive information associated with the individuals and made available to researchers, these collections have served as foundational resources for theory and methods development in biological anthropology into the 21st century. Recognizing the need for ethical guidelines for research, teaching and training, community engagement, and curation involving HDCs, we held a workshop called “Ethical Futures for Curation, Research, and Teaching in Biological Anthropology” on November 15–17, 2021. Here we summarize the conversations and major points of consensus among the workshop participants on these topics in order to advance these ethical considerations more broadly across the field.
While the history of North American archaeology points to a long engagement with tribal elders and scholars, these encounters largely consist of unequal, extractive relationships wherein Indigenous collaborators and Indigenous archaeologists have been treated more as objects of study and pity—what Bea Medicine refers to as “creatures”—rather than as equal research partners. As an Indigenous woman and a settler Chicanx woman, we reflect on the life journey and scholarship of Bea Medicine, a Lakota scholar‐activist and mentor to Indigenous anthropologists. Dr. Medicine's work has provided generations of Indigenous anthropologists with the means to participate in the discipline with their whole selves and, importantly, on their own terms. We argue that Medicine's contributions provide good medicine for the field in the form of concrete strategies for continuing to decolonize the discipline and for doing work that centers the direct needs and perspectives of Indigenous peoples. When read alongside Indigenous archaeologies’ often overlooked grandmothers, mothers, and aunties, Medicine's work also highlights continuing disparities in archaeological practice, from our relationships with and to Indigenous nations to the relations we cultivate in the Academy as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
The Nevin site in Maine has become a contested space as Wabanaki people seeking to repatriate their ancestors confront archaeologists who adhere to the antiquated postulates of their predecessors. Warren K. Moorehead, of Phillips Academy's archaeology department, focused field work on Maine's so‐called “Red Paint” cemeteries from 1912–1920. Moorehead acknowledged the antiquity of the cemeteries but saw the people as members of a “lost civilization” culturally distinct from later Indigenous groups. Douglas Byers succeeded Moorehead and excavated graves at the Nevin site from 1936–1940. Despite radiocarbon dates and a better understanding of the Archaic period, Byers did not attribute Nevin's lavish grave goods to that early era. The confusion sowed by Moorehead and Byers still influences contemporary archaeologists and museum personnel who resist Wabanaki efforts to repatriate their ancestors under contemporary legislation. Despite the lack of robust research on in‐migration, prevailing ideas about the Late Archaic in Maine envision a population replacement by southern immigrants. This hypothesis opposes claims of cultural connectedness by contemporary Wabanaki peoples. Here, we explore the archaeological legacy associated with the Nevin cemetery and challenge archaeologists to confront colonialist science that permeates repatriation.
The World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was a traumatic event that had lasting repercussions on multiple communities. Archaeologists have sought to productively pursue community‐based methodologies in studying this period, employing object‐based oral histories, outreach events, and community participation in fieldwork. However, less scholarly attention has looked to the ways in which materials have become central to understanding and mobilizing around the incarceration camp history. Acts of pilgrimage, memorialization, scholarly study, and activism constitute key arenas through which this heritage is participated with, each interacting with materials in different ways. This article discusses three cases of material engagements, from the politics of object ownership to origami activism and their importance in reckoning with this violent past. Materials in these cases are not passive objects but rather spur actions and create new publics. Furthermore, the physical qualities of materials shape both the ways in which they are engaged and the politics that surround their rhetorical deployment.
After Ferguson, Standing Rock, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the crisis of refugees at the US southern border, there have been renewed calls for a racial reckoning in US anthropology. Dissatisfaction on the domestic front runs parallel to an unease over US anthropology's failure to adequately address militarism, imperialism, and predatory capitalism abroad. Finally, there is the fraught question of US anthropology's oversized influence within world anthropologies. We propose that a reassessment of US anthropology might fruitfully begin with some counterfactual history. How would US anthropology been different had the founding generations conceptualized the discipline as a decolonizing project? What topics or themes might have become central to US anthropology? How might our methods have been different? To make anthropology departments more diverse, inclusive, and equitable, we need to do more than add faculty and students of color. Despite being a field whose central concept is “culture,” we have paid far too little attention to the culture of anthropology departments. Do unexamined practices of “white‐norming” that shape the everyday lives of faculty and students in anthropology departments persistently “Other”—marginalize and alienate—people of color?
Cape Town statement on research partnerships between the global north and south will highlight unethical practices and offer advice to scientists. Cape Town statement on research partnerships between the global north and south will highlight unethical practices and offer advice to scientists. Credit: University of Cape Town Professor Thuli Madonsela delivering the Steneck Mayer Lecture at the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity. Professor Thuli Madonsela delivering the Steneck Mayer Lecture at the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity.
The thesis of this brief exposition is the absolute and immediate necessity of preserving existing osteological collections. Once lost, they can never be replaced. They are priceless, historically and culturally. Each collection is unique, in content and in scientific value. No one collection is complete, or replicates any other. These collections are separated by space and by time, by geography and by epoch. They preserve our past, as well as our understanding of human variation. They help us to better understand the human condition and contribute to the advancement of many disciplines including: anthropology, medicine, surgery, anatomy, history, and, undeniably, forensic anthropology. In spite of their uniqueness, all osteological collections face similar challenges: cultural norms and sensitivities, funding, space limitations, and competing priorities. This article provides a succinct overview of several private and public collections around the world, the challenges of preservation, and the benefits of their salvation. The skeletal collections described here are but a sample of what is, and of what may be lost. Anything more would require a book. Anything less would be an irreplaceable and tragic loss.
Over the past few decades, paleoanthropology has undergone a transformative shift away from studies focused solely on traditional assessments of skeletal anatomy. Prior to this shift, a review highlighting a year of research may have primarily consisted of a description of new fossil discoveries; in 2019, however, this review also incorporates novel subject matters such as ancient DNA, paleoproteomics, and studies applying a wide array of new analytical methods and theoretical frameworks to paleoanthropological questions. Through these new advances, the nonlinearity and complexity of hominin evolution has been illuminated, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary work in progressing the field. In addition, similar to the broader discipline of biological anthropology, the topic of decolonization has been reflected on and discussed. Further, researchers in paleoanthropology are grappling with important issues related to open access and data sharing. In light of this widening scope, this review centers on a collection of studies that focus on five key themes: (1) new discoveries; (2) data sharing and ethics; (3) human origins research; (4) paleogenomics, and new advancements in paleoproteomics; and (5) introspection on a colonial history. Paleoanthropology is coming of age, and in 2019 especially, published research has been reflective of this. [Evolutionary anthropology; human evolution; year in review; human origins].
This essay principally meditates on the scholarship published by sociocultural anthropologists in 2019. In 2019, the field of anthropology confronted anthropogenic climate change and authoritarian governance both as objects of scholarly inquiry and as existential threats to the reproduction of the discipline. Taking the 2018 American Anthropological Association meeting in San Jose as a point of departure, this essay posits the California wildfires as an immanent challenge to anthropological practice. Pace Mike Davis, the case for letting anthropology burn entails a call to abandon its liberal suppositions. As a discourse of moral perfectibility founded in histories of settler colonialism and chattel slavery, liberal humanism and its anthropological register of ethnographic sentimentalism proved insufficient to confront the existential threats of climate catastrophe and authoritarian retrenchment in 2019. The case for letting anthropology burn is fortified by efforts to unsettle the conceptual and methodological preoccupations of the discipline in service of political projects of repatriation, repair, and abolition. By abandoning the universal liberal subject as a stable foil for a renewed project of cultural critique, the field of anthropology cannot presume a coherent human subject as its point of departure but must adopt a radical humanism as its political horizon. [ sociocultural anthropology, settler colonialism, afterlives of slavery, climate change, the human ]
Drawing on Anishinabe concepts of holistic health and well-being, this article explores ways that repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural items can contribute to healing and well-being in Indigenous communities. The focus is on “Indigenous storywork” and embodied practices amongst those who are engaged in reclaiming ancestral remains and cultural items, with examples from the author’s experience in repatriation, reburial, and reclaiming cultural heritage. The author describes her work developing a graphic narrative about repatriation as a method of storywork. She describes her use of comics and other storywork practices in teaching, and as a means of bringing Indigenous teaching and learning practices into higher education.
The remains that typically compose the human fossil record often bear cracks, damage, and
deformations. The recent rapid development of ‘virtual anthropology’ has provided
innovative tools to manage, study, and preserve cultural and natural heritage. Such tools
include computerized tomography (CT), laser scanning, photogrammetry, 3D imaging, and
rapid prototyping. These approaches can contribute to any archaeological context from the
discovery of artefacts to research, preservation, and dissemination. 3D imaging techniques
can substitute physical intervention with a virtual protocol to restore the original shape of a
fossil specimen. In a similar way, digital morphological information can be recovered using
data preserved even on a fragment through the use of 3D comparative samples. Here we
present an extended and updated review of the most innovative protocols in virtual
anthropology, also applicable in other fields such as natural history and cultural heritage
studies, through the description of recent cast studies.
The Wenner-Gren Foundation is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2016. It was founded in 1941 with an endowment of approximately US165 million. Wenner-Gren has never been a large foundation in the sense of Rockefeller or Mellon, but it has had a disproportionate impact on the field of anthropology. The foundation and the field have in essence grown up together. Wenner-Gren preceded the other major US funder of anthropology, the National Science Foundation, by almost two decades and, through its grants, fellowships, sponsored symposia, and publications, has always been there for anthropology. It is not the same foundation as it was 75 years ago, however, and it has gone through its own difficult times, particularly in the 1970s, when a downturn in the financial markets together with changes in the US not-for-profit laws put severe pressure on the foundation, and again in the 1980s when, for a variety of reasons, it was almost lost to anthropology. However, the past three decades have seen a resurgence, and over this period we have provided approximately US$90 million to anthropology, funding almost 6,000 anthropological projects in the United States and abroad. © 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research has played a critical but little-understood role in the development of the social and biological sciences since 1941. For anthropology particularly, its programs have often helped redefine scholarly priorities and research trajectories. Its grants to doctoral students have functioned as an important early sign of scholarly legitimacy, a mark of belonging to the profession. The foundation’s history also reflects general transformations in scientific patronage as new landscapes of federal, military, and private funding reconfigured opportunities in the social sciences. In this account we track the evolution of the foundation in tandem with the evolution of anthropology during a period of dramatic change after 1941, looking at the Second World War context from which the foundation emerged and the ideas and experiences of those who played a key role in this history. We examine the long-term influence of a philanthropic foundation on the postwar emergence of an internationally oriented anthropology from a tiny, almost clubby discipline with a few key institutions and leaders to a major academic and scientific enterprise with sometimes revolutionary ideas about evolution, human biology, race, culture, power, gender, and social order. © 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
Since the late 1970s human remains in museum collections have been subject to claims and controversies, such as demands for repatriation by indigenous groups who suffered under colonization. These requests have been strongly contested by scientists who research the material and consider it unique evidence.
This book charts the influences at play on the contestation over human remains and examines the construction of this problem from a cultural perspective. It shows that claims on dead bodies are not confined to once colonized groups. A group of British Pagans, Honouring the Ancient Dead, formed to make claims on skeletons from the British Isles. And ancient human remains, bog bodies and Egyptian mummies, which have not been requested by any group, have become the focus of campaigns initiated by members of the profession, at times removed from display in the name of respect.
By drawing on empirical research including extensive interviews with the claims-making groups, ethnographic work, document, media, and policy analysis, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections demonstrates that strong internal influences do in fact exist. The only book to examine the construction of contestation over human remains from a sociological perspective, it advances an emerging area of academic research, setting the terms of debate, synthesizing disparate ideas, and making sense of a broader cultural focus on dead bodies in the contemporary period.
Recent studies in paleopathology have shown promise in associating some skeletal lesions with malarial infection. However, malaria's skeletal manifestation has never been confirmed using a large clinical reference sample from an endemic area for malaria with known individual causes of death.
To pinpoint evidence of malaria infection on ancient skeletal remains, this study uses an epidemiological approach to compare skeletal lesions in a modern reference sample of 98 individuals from Uganda, where malaria is holoendemic, to a similar modern sample of 106 individuals from a malaria-free area.
Five porous skeletal lesions are identified that appear more frequently in the endemic area population, especially in anemic individuals. These appear on the cranium, vertebral column, and humeral and femoral necks. Periostitis also associates strongly with individuals in the endemic population; however, linear enamel hypoplasias show an inverse association. The identified lesions are tested for their association with each other, and then tested individually for their diagnostic power through measures of sensitivity and specificity. A diagnostic outcome algorithm is formed from the remaining skeletal lesions and their inter-lesion associations.
Several etiological explanations for the characteristic malarial skeletal lesions are explored, including severe malarial anemia, an imbalance in bone remodeling, and extramedullary erythropoiesis. The importance of careful differential diagnoses between other infectious and noninfectious causes of these lesions is discussed, including the potential for coinfection of malaria with other infectious diseases. The findings of this study are pivotal in establishing diagnostic criteria by which we can identify the prevalence and impact of malaria on past populations. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Discussions of repatriation dominate the topic of human remains in museums. For the large portion of remains that are not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, however, concerns regarding how to curate, exhibit, and interpret them are paramount, especially when the remains are those of children. The contents of anthropological collections often reflect a shared past that may be uncomfortable to address, but was formative and valuable to the discipline. Understanding the motivations and circumstances that contributed to bringing human remains into museums, as well as the changing uses and interpretations of those remains over time, is an are important aspect of collections care and public engagement. This article examines a skeletal series of fetuses and children at the National Museum of Health and Medicine as a case study for uncovering and conveying to museum visitors the complex histories behind the acquisition, curation, and display of juvenile human remains. [Army Medical Museum, National Museum of Health and Medicine, juvenile human remains, exhibition, visitor studies, museum collecting, history of anthropology]
Comparative morphology, dealing with the diversity of form and shape, and functional morphology, the study of the relationship between the structure and the function of an organism's parts, are both important subdisciplines in biological research. Virtual anthropology (VA) contributes to comparative morphology by taking advantage of technological innovations, and it also offers new opportunities for functional analyses. It exploits digital technologies and pools experts from different domains such as anthropology, primatology, medicine, paleontology, mathematics, statistics, computer science, and engineering. VA as a technical term was coined in the late 1990s from the perspective of anthropologists with the intent of being mostly applied to biological questions concerning recent and fossil hominoids. More generally, however, there are advanced methods to study shape and size or to manipulate data digitally suitable for application to all kinds of primates, mammals, other vertebrates, and invertebrates or to issues regarding plants, tools, or other objects. In this sense, we could also call the field “virtual morphology.” The approach yields permanently available virtual copies of specimens and data that comprehensively quantify geometry, including previously neglected anatomical regions. It applies advanced statistical methods, supports the reconstruction of specimens based on reproducible manipulations, and promotes the acquisition of larger samples by data sharing via electronic archives. Finally, it can help identify new, hidden traits, which is particularly important in paleoanthropology, where the scarcity of material demands extracting information from fragmentary remains. This contribution presents a current view of the six main work steps of VA: digitize, expose, compare, reconstruct, materialize, and share. The VA machinery has also been successfully used in biomechanical studies which simulate the stress and strains appearing in structures. Although methodological issues remain to be solved before results from the two domains can be fully integrated, the various overlaps and cross-fertilizations suggest the widespread appearance of a “virtual functional morphology” in the near future. Yrbk Phys Anthropol, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.