Tag Archives: conference

Approaching the Ethics of Human Remains from a Medical History perspective. Report from the AAHM meetings.

May 11-14, I attended the annual meeting for the American Association for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I chaired a roundtable entitled “Historical Medical Collections, Human Biomaterials and Remains” which explored the multiple ethical challenges surrounding historical medical collections, a category that is problematized also in Ethical Entanglements.

By historical collections the round table referred to the medical museums and anatomical and pathological cabinets that from the mid 18th century that all played a central role in medical research and pedagogy. At the time, and in the century and a half that followed, they functioned not only as reference points for medical knowledge production and reproduction, but also as shrines to medicine, the science, its men and their achievements. In the 20th and 21st centuries however, they are being perceived in new ways. Now the darker sides of their origin is coming into focus: unregulated trade, theft, and ethically dubious collection practices permeated the practice before institutional, professional and state governance and the development of professional ethics centered on bioethics and informed consent reshaped medical and anthropological practice. Nobody can contest the important contributions these collections made to our medical knowledge, our understanding of the human body, its biology, and the pathways to healing it. However, the dark past that looms over the legacy of these collections ties them to structures of classicm, racism, sexism, colonialism, and authoritarianism, that all facilitated their coming into being. 

It is – without a doubt – a troubling legacy. 

The Michigan Union at University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor was the venue for the annual conference for the American Association for the history of Medicine, May 2023. Photo by Liv Nilsson Stutz.

Today, new methods and technical advances have made these collections less relevant for teaching medical students and for carrying out research on human biology, anatomy, and pathology. As their “value” for medicine has decreased, they have come under increased scrutiny and criticism with their troubling legacy casting longer and darker shadows, to the point of calling into question their continued existence. We are starting to hear more and more voices calling for their destruction, deaccessioning, and limitations in terms of both public access and research. 

While recognizing the importance of the criticism and the dark legacy, this panel problematized this development and asked: Are there multiple and competing ethical claims to consider when exploring the theoretical, political and practical challenges facing these collections and the institutions that care for them? What are the possible futures for these collections? What role should they play for medical professionals, for scholars, in education, and for the public? As these collections no longer hold the status of shrines, can their role be redefined in productive and ethical ways, for example as public facing centers of historical research and exhibition – and if they are, can these centers be imagined in a way that also considers their dark history to operate as democratic, inclusive institutions in a way that adhers to the contemporary role of museums (as defined by ICOM)? What are the best ethical policies and practices when we approach these complex issues? 

While recognizing the ongoing debate, which for the sake of simplification can be characterized as postcolonial debate, and that tends to be centered on specific categories of remains, and without trying to ignore or suppress it, the round table sought to explore additional questions around value, use and multiple ethics that tend to be marginalised in the current conversations. We came to this conversation from different experiences – from the fields of medicine, history and archaeology – all with various experiences of debating these issues on a theoretical level, carrying out research on human remains, and managing museum collections with human remains.

Speakers at the Roundtable on Historical Medical Collections, from the left, Mike Sappol, Olof Ljungström, and Rainer Brömer. Photo by Liv Nilsson Stutz.

The speakers at the roundtable were:

Mike Sappol – a medical historian based at Uppsala university with a significant experience as an exhibition curator and at the National Library of Medicine, and the author of several important books. His work focuses on the history of anatomy, death and the visual culture of medicine and science, the body, the history of museums and queer studies. His paper entitled “Endangered specimens. Historical Human remains and derivatives: competing claims, meanings, critiques, and practices” interrogated and explored the debates surrounding these historical collections and their different and complex values through the case of the Museo Morgagni di Anatomia in Padua: as materiality, artifacts, and perhaps even as a form of “relics of an extinct medical civilization.”

Olof Ljungström – a historian at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, where he oversees the anatomical collection. His work focuses on the history of medicine, including 19th century anatomy, race science and the history of research at KI. His paper The Body Politics in the Anatomy Collection: Where the politics of the past meets the politics of the present, contextualized the history of the Finnish crania at the KI collection and the contemporary claims surrounding them.

Rainer Brömer from the Institute for the history of Pharmacy and Medicine at the Phillips University in Marburg, where his research focuses on Anatomy and Pharmacy in the Ottoman Empire, Medical and research ethics, and the body, and where he has also been involved with the Marburg university anatomical collection, its Museum Anatomicum and the conception of a future museum in Marburg. His paper, Gazing at human bodies – epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics discussed the ethical challenges of this project.

After the presentation the room engaged in discussion that included voices form colleagues currently working with historical medical collections in museums across the United States who shared their perspectives and experiences.

“It is always more than one thing”

Lisa Harris in the opeing roundtable “Being a Public Scholar Now” on the subject of abortion

Personally I felt inspired as I made connections between what I was hearing in the room and what I had heard at the opening round table session for the entire conference earlier that day entitled “Being a Public Scholar Now: Obligations, Opportunities, and Dangers” chaired by Susan Reverby with Angela Dillard, Alice Dreger, and Lisa Harris. In her address Lisa Harris, who is an OBGYN, holds a PhD in American Culture, and is an activist for women’s reproductive rights, spoke about her role as a public intellectual and why it matters. Her thoughtful remarks were inspiring and, I believe, tie in with the conversation we were having hours later when discussing historical medical collections. She emphasised two dimensions that drive her work as a researcher and activist. First the presentism of history. “You learn from the past – about what was “bad” then, but you never distance yourself too much from the past, because the problems are still present.” She said, “you can biopsy any moment in American History and you can see similarities today.” The second dimension was her love of history and the ways in which its complexities reveal themselves through research. It is always more complicated than you think, she argued, and you need to embrace the complexity and hold the ambiguities. It is possible that something can be both good and bad, all at once – for example abortion: it is both a death and at the same time the opportunity for life and freedom for another person. “It is always more than one thing.” Given the subject of her research, it was also obvious that taking a stance that complicates the matters at first can be difficult, as many people who are engaged with a topic like reproductive rights may seek and want a more straight forward answer. But ultimately, the only way to really move forward and find the productive and real solutions requires a recognition of ambiguity and complexity. And here, in that recognition, the presentism of history comes back to enrich our sensitivities and our understanding of how phenomena like historic medical collections hold ambiguities and complexities that we need to embrace, not avoid, if we want to understand their potentials and their charge.

featured image: Baby Carraige” by Orin Zebest is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Report from “Encountering Human Remains: Heritage Issues and Ethical Considerations” in Cambridge

On May 11 and 12, 2023, the 23rd Cambridge Heritage Symposium took place at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. The topic of these two-days symposium was “Encountering Human Remains: Heritage Issues and Ethical Considerations”.

Despite what one may think looking at the hosting place, archaeology was not the only point of view in discussing the human remains, nor was it the main one. On the contrary, many different approaches, methodologies, fields were presented and discussed in these two stimulating, interesting, and emotional days – as it is very well proved by the six sessions in which the days were divided: 1. European Conflictscapes and the War Dead, 2. Necropolitics and Commemorating the Dead, 3. Shifting the Narrative and Management of Human Remains, 4. Encountering Death in Museums: Ethics of Display and Public Perception of Human Remains, 5. Studying the Dead: Curation and Archival Research of Human Remains, and 6. Reflecting on Epistemology, Spirituality, and the Social Dead.

The Symposium was organized by Dr. Trish Biers, Elif Dogan, Leanne Daly, Dr. Miriam Saqqa-Carazo, Dr. Gilly Carr, Dr. Paola Filippucci, and Ben Davenport.

File:Ivory model of a human skeleton, suspended in a case with op Wellcome L0058603.jpg” is licensed under CC BY 4.0. This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Ref Wellcome blog post (archive).

Alongside the sessions, two keynote speakers presented their unique perspectives on two interesting themes: the first day Dr. Layla Renshaw explored the different dimensions of personhood sought by the living when a mass grave is exhumed, bringing case studies of contemporary exhumations of Republican mass graves from the Spanish Civil War; on the second morning, George Gumisiriza used the lens of migrant corpses to explore potential individual and collective ways of encountering human remains in society. The registration of these interesting and moving intervention are available on the site of the research center.

After Dr. Renshaw keynote, Dr. Gilly Carr kicked-off the first session with a question that everyone working with human remains – and ethics in general – asked themselves at least once in their life: “What is an inappropriate behavior?”. The question pairs perfectly with the general recommendation of treating human remains “with respect”, when one encounters them. After Dr. Carr her colleagues in the session, Dr. Margaret Comer, Leonora Weller, and Dr. Magdalena Matczak beautifully interrogated regarding war and holocaust dead and on what the human rights of human skeletal remains are as heritage – and if human remains resulting from atrocities should be heritage at all.

The following session, with the talk of Dr. Daniel Gaudio, Oliver Moxham and Hyunjae Kim, explored the commemoration of dead and the connection with politics, from different perspectives, starting with the challenges of analyzing frozen remains in Northern Italy, going through the possible linguistic barriers in Japan and finishing with the interpretation of colonial deathscapes and local’s narrative in South Korea.

The last session of the first day explored new possible narratives around human remains, specifically shifting from the dominant Western approaches and discourses. Dr. Yunci Cai presented the case of the Monospiad Cultural Village in Sabah, East Malaysia, while Dr. Heba Abd el Gawad underlined the invisibility to which the contemporary Egyptian people are subject, when it comes to their discomfort towards the display of mummified Egyptian human remains in Western museums. Paloma Robles Lacayo proudly described the efforts undertaken in trying to identify the Mummies of Guanajuato, to eradicate their objectification, without hiding the difficulties encountered (and still encountering) and Dr. Guido Lombardi showed the possibility of carrying on the Ancestors’ legacy, respecting their body-preserving traditions and bridging them with modern education and local specialists.

Following the beautiful keynote lecture, the second day opened with the encounter of death in museums. To open the session, Dr. Katie Stringer Clary draw the history of the exploitation of the Indigenous or “abnormal”, sometimes living, bodies. She begun by discussing the very first freakshows up until today, pointing out that: “Museums no longer exhibit living people. Still, how far have they come?”. Olga Nikonenko focused instead on the complicated issues of the provenance, public display and repatriation of the multi-cultural Graeco-Roman mummified remains discovered in Egypt. More personal perspectives were those offered by Dr. Jody Joy, who told his experience in curating the Lindow Man, and by Cat Irving, who closed this session telling the stories “of those that you don’t find in history books”.

Since the beginning of the Symposium questions arose at the back on my mind, and they haven’t left yet: where do we draw a line, if we can draw a line at all?

The speakers of the second session of the day, Dr. Miriam Saqqa-Carazo, Dr Rachel Sparks, Jelena Bkvalac and Dr. Ayesha Fuentes, focused more on the curatorial aspects of handling human remains in museums, as well as on the archival research.

To conclude this full, thought-provoking two-days Symposium, the last session tackled a more epistemological, spiritual and social perspective. The speakers, Prof. Shawn Graham, Ellie Chambers, and Dr. Svetlana Seibel, went from unveiling some (disturbing) sides of the trade of human remains on e-commerce and social media platforms, through their exploitation on online news platform as clickbait, to showing literary encounters with ancestral remains. Closing the session, Prof. Charles Clary (see also his IG) moving talk guided us towards his personal exploration of death, mourning and healing through his art, which also provided the beautiful cover of the Symposium’s programme.

Since the beginning of the Symposium questions arose at the back on my mind, and they haven’t left yet: where do we draw a line, if we can draw a line at all? Should politics be allowed to objectify the remains, using them for its own purposes? What’s the distance in time that determines whose ancestors are worthy of asking for repatriation? And is this distance really sufficient, to ignore this type of concern? And should professionals working with human remains be completely detached and unemotional, as usually required to scientists, to be considered professionals?

As for all the best encounters, these two days left me with more new open questions than answers. Unfortunately, it is not possible to see all the amazing talks that have been delivered in those two days, but the online poster session is still available and showcases very interesting researches.

by: Nicole Crescenzi

featured image: File:Ivory model of half a human head, half a skull, Europe Wellcome L0057081.jpg” is licensed under CC BY 4.0. This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Ref: Wellcome blog post (archive).

“We are the heart, you are the brain”. Report from a seminar on repatriation to indigenous communities

On April 28, 2021, Professor Helene Martinsson Wallin (Uppsala University) and Dr. Olaug Andreassen (National Museum of Oslo) organised a webinar on the topic of repatriation of human remains to indigenous communities.

While the main focus of the seminar was on Rapa Nui, the heritage of Nordic colonialism was present as an important backdrop to the discussion, a reminder to Swedish scholars working with repatriation that there is no “Nordic exceptionalism” when it comes to colonial history, and the Nordic countries were a part of these global processses in all their various forms. Ulrika Persson-Fischier (Uppsala University) used her study of the crania collected by Nordenskiöld’s Vega Expedition to discuss the challenges of working with old colonial records when trying to establish “provenience.” She pointed out the paradox that despite good intentions, we risk reproducing colonial ideologies through the practice of repatriation if we use old records and categorisations. Mikael Jacobsson from the Lycksele Museum of Forestry shared his experiences of the repatriation and reburial of crania collected in from an old cemetery in Sápmi in the 1950s and returned for reburial in 2019. He showed moving images of the ceremony and discussed the difficulty in getting museums to really understand that human remains are not just archaeological and historical artefacts. Finally, the agreement to repatriate thousands of objects and human remains from the Kon Tiki Museum in Oslo, collected by Thor Heyerdahl and his team during his travels in the Pacific in the 1950s and 1980s, provided an immediate connection to the main focus of the webinar – the experiences of the repatriation of human remains to Rapa Nui.

A View of the Monuments of Easter Island, Rapanui, c. 1775-1776 by William Hodges.
Public Domain

Rapa Nui constitutes an interesting example to discuss repatriation. It is caught in complex layers of colonialism and relationships to the state of Chile. Known more widely by the name “Easter Island,” a name given by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeween who accidentally “discovered” the island on Easter Sunday in 1722, the island is wrapped up in colonial history. In the decades that followed Roggeween’s short visit, several other expeditions landed on its shores, marking the beginning of a deep and painful colonial history including disease, structural violence, black birding, slave trade, and exploitation. The island was annexed to Chile in 1888. It holds the status of special territory since 2007, but the relationship to the Chilean state has not been without conflict.

From a cultural heritage point of view Rapa Nui is renowned for its monumental Moai, the sculptural heads that line its shores as “the living faces of deified ancestors.” But beyond these striking sculptures, the island is the home of an impressive cultural and archaeological heritage of monumental architecture, petroglyphs, and wood carvings that all can be traced back to the indigenous Rapa Nui. Given its painful history with colonialism, it is not surprising that calls for repatriation of both cultural objects and human remains play an important role in current debates, with the most highlighted example being the call to repatriate the Moai called Hoa Hakananai (lost or stolen friend) from the British Museum. In the process Chile has become a powerful player. Under Chilean law, the Moai are not regarded simply as art or artefacts, but deemed an “integral part of the land”, and in 2017 the control over them, along with other archaeological sites, was symbolically handed over, from the Chilean National Forest Corporation to the Rapa Nui by President Michelle Bachelet.

At the webinar, we would hear several voices engaged in the movement for the recognition of the right of Rapa Nui to gain control of their heritage including the human remains of their ancestors deposited in museums all over the world. Biological Anthropologist Associate Professor Felipe Martinez (Pontifica Universidad de Católica de Chile) discussed the importance of viewing human remains, not only as biological specimens but also as a part of cultural heritage, and stressed the need for a developed legal framework that recognises the rights of indigenous people in this context. Dr Jacinta Arthur (Pontificia Universidad de Católica de Chile), who has worked as the coordinator for the repatriation program in Rapa Nui, introduced the concept of patrimonialization of indigenous culture to the discussion, and discussed how legal instruments can protect cultural heritage for the nation without considering the needs of the indigenous communities to which it belongs.

This becomes especially interesting when unpacking the complexities of international repatriations of indigenous human remains and heritage. Who does this belong to? To where should it be repatriated? Who decides on the future of these remains? Here the relationship between the descending community, be it a majority population, a minority population, or an indigenous population, becomes central. As nation states come to agreements, the opportunities for descending communities may look very different depending on their relationship to the nation state that may or may not recognise their right to control their cultural heritage. Here the issues raised by both Dr Jacinta Arthur and Ulrika Persson-Fishcier (albeit in a different context) come back into focus.

“We are the heart, you are the brain”

These issues are without a doubt complex and difficult. What is the way forward? Curator Sr. Mario Tuki (Museo Antropologico Padre Sebastian Englert MAPSE Rapa Nui Repatriation Program Ka Haka Hoki Mai te Mana Tupuna and Hare Tapu Tu’u Ivi) offered a pathway. In his presentation and in the discussion, he stressed not only the importance of collaboration between scientists and indigenous communities, but also the importance of academic actors to recognise the emotional dimension of the process. Indigenous communities, with a lived experience of trauma from a violent colonial history, will bring a consideration for this emotional dimension. This should not be seen as a complication, but as an asset in the work toward mutual learning and understanding. Academics, on the other hand, will bring a problematizing and intellectual approach to the situation. We need both. “We are the heart, you are the brain,” he declared, proposing a wonderful metaphor for all of us who are seeking a productive way forward. Recognising that both the heart and the brain are vital organs, and that they sustain each other, Mario Tuki’s words leave me inspired and humbled.

image credit banner: Tukuturi, Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA3.0

Ethics take center stage at conference on the Archaeology of Death in the Digital Age

This year’s edition of the University of Chester Archaeology Student Conference on the Archaeology of Death, DigiDeath 2021, on January 27-28 (for a complete program as well as links to several of the presentations, please see entry on professor Howard Williams blog Archaeodeath), was dedicated to the public archaeology of digital mortality. The event was clearly framed by the global pandemic. The ever looming themes of death and mortality are not new to the yearly conference devoted specifically to these topics, but the changes in how we die and how we mourn in the time of Covid-19 probably brought the themes of mortality, mourning and commemoration even closer to home this year. In addition, the closure of museums and universities, and the cancellation of conferences, workshops, and other meeting spaces for academic exchange and learning, brought digital tools and social media into focus, and of course, the event took place online.

The papers were presented by students as well as researchers in a range of formats, from live papers presented digitally, to twitter papers and video recordings, all engaging new forms for communication and archiving of academic production.

When summing up the many presentations, several themes around public archaeology and digital tools come into focus, all relating in explicit and implicit ways to broader considerations of ethics – professional and personal.

“Sharing is not always caring”

Several papers on different aspects of public archaeology raised interesting questions about accessibility, education and multi-vocality. While images of archaeological remains and virtual tours of exhibitions serve the important goal of opening up museums, collections, and even the archaeological research process to all, they also pose new questions. Where do we draw the line regarding what to share and how? “Sharing is not always caring” – as stated by Erin Munro in her paper on virtual exhibition tours and mortuary heritage. But how can we tell when we cross the line? Does the showing of human remains become less respectful when it leaves the museum context and moves out on the web – in a virtual exhibit or an instagram post – and if so, why? By asking ourselves these questions we get the opportunity to examine our culturally shaped understanding of museum spaces, and in that process we must also realise that what may be a respectful place in our eyes may be perceived very differently by others

New technologies bring new possibilities – and ethical challenges. The reproduction of 3D models of human remains (paper by Campanacho and Alves Cardoso) invites us to reflect over post mortem privacy and integrity in new ways. This is a growing and unregulated field that has not yet found its ethical footing.

Other ethical issues that were raised related to the ways in which engagement with the public also entails sharing the power over the narrative. Powerful narratives of the past that are presented in the press, in movies, TV series and video games, often take great liberty with the creative license, focusing on the spectacular or gory, highlighting male elites at the expense of others, and reproducing stereotypes about the past. The digital era and its many and various tools intensifies this engagement through online communities, comment sections, an approach to lived experiences through gaming, and so on. What is more important, we may ask: that the past is represented in a “correct” way, or that people engage with it at all? The consequences of misrepresentation might be even higher in the ways in which the press and social media often present archaeology and anthropology, reproducing colonial and ethically questionable images of treasure hunters and grave openers. While these images appear to still attract a part of the public, they are offensive and disrespectful to others and threaten to undermine the work of making archaeology a more respectful and inclusive practice.

In our contemporary digital era, images play a central role in how we communicate with each other and how we draw attention to our work. Online presences on blogs and social media pose new questions about both personal and professional ethics. It is important at this moment to not be satisfied with easy formulaic answers to our ethical dilemmas, but to view our task ahead as one of constant questioning and examining of the ethics of the discipline – and most importantly, of ourselves in our roles as archaeologists and fellow human beings.