14 - Conclusions and Ways Forward

Summary

Introduction

This volume is an attempt to clarify the current thinking on how we in museums, universities and other repositories that hold human remains care for and address the myriad issues that surround human remains. There has in the past been a lack of emphasis on what caring for human remains entails, which has given rise to the erroneous view that human remains in museums sit unused or unresearched on dusty shelves. We have in the past been too self-deprecating and reticent to really discuss what we do. This reluctance has to some extent led to the views expressed by the Working Group on Human Remains chaired by Norman Palmer (DCMs 2003). This viewpoint, often perpetuated by our fellow academics who have acted as consultants to communities, has also been fed to claimant communities who want remains returned from museum collections. These advisers have sometimes based this view on small local collections known to them and then extrapolated this to national collections; many of them neither engage in the care and curation of, nor undertake research on, human remains. The view is also convenient for calling into question why remains are in museums or other collections. This is not to say that the question should not be asked but that we as the specialists should be less reluctant to answer these questions and should quietly and carefully highlight the importance of the remains and the contribution they can make to our knowledge and understanding of the human condition, both in the past and present.