CHAPTER 1

BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS:A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEON THE VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINSPHILLIP L. WALKER

INTRODUCTION

The rapidity of technological and culturalchange in current times is forcing us to con-front a myriad of moral dilemmas over issuesas wide ranging as the ethics of cloning hu-mans, the ownership of our genetic material,and the rights of animals relative to those ofhumans. These ethical issues concern the verynature of what it means to be human and ourrelationships, not only to other people, but alsoto the plants and animals that sustain us.

The enormous strides we have taken towardhuman equality during this century mean thatformerly disenfranchised and enslaved mem-bers of minority groups are beginning to gainpower and control over their lives. In manycountries there has been a decline in the politi-cal dominance and moral authority of orga-nized religions. Notions of multiculturalismand a growing acceptance of the moral princi-ple of not discriminating against people basedon gender, ethnicity, or religious beliefs meanthat there is no longer a shared set of culturalvalues we can use for guidance in dealing withmoral issues (Cottingham, 1994).

This increased tolerance of cultural diver-sity poses ethical dilemmas because, as the

Biological Anthropologv of the Human Skeleton, Edited byM. Anne Katzenberg and Shelley R. Saunders.ISBN 0-471-31616-4

Copyright © 2000 by Wiley-Liss, Inc.

range of value systems and religious beliefsthat are considered socially acceptableincreases, so does the probability of socialconflict. To deal with these issues, many sci-entific associations are beginning to recon-sider ethical principles that underlie theirresearch activities. The field of bioarchaeol-ogy is especially problematic in this respect,positioned as it is between medicine, with itsethical focus on generating scientific knowl-edge for use in helping individual patients,and anthropology, with its ethical principlesthat stem from deep belief in the power of cul-tural relativism to overcome ethnocentrismand encourage tolerance.

It is in this context that skeletal biologistsare increasingly being forced to adapt their ac-tivities to the value systems of the descendantsof the people they study. Human skeletal re-mains are more than utilitarian objects of valuefor scientific research. For many people, theyalso are objects of religious veneration of greatsymbolic and cultural significance. Over thepast thirty years, formerly disenfranchisedgroups such as Native Americans and Aus-tralian Aborigines have increasingly been ableto assert their claims of moral authority to con-trol the disposition of both the remains of theirancestors and the land their ancestors occupied(Howitt, 1998; Scott, 1996). This trend towardrepatriating museum collections and grantingland rights to indigenous people can only be

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understood within a broader social and histori-cal context.

To provide this historical perspective, I willdescribe the evolution of religious beliefs aboutthe proper treatment of the dead and conflictsthat have arisen over the centuries betweenthese beliefs and the value scientists place onthe empirical information that can be gainedthrough research on human remains. This isfollowed by a discussion of the generally ac-cepted ethical principles that are beginning toemerge in the field of bioarchaeology. Finally,some practical suggestions are offered for deal-ing with conflicts that arise when these ethicalprinciples conflict with those of descendantgroups.

THE HISTORY OF BELIEFSABOUTTHE DEAD

Early in our evolutionary history people beganto develop a keen interest in the remains oftheir dead comrades. At first this was undoubt-edly simply a response to the practical consid-erations of removing the decaying remains of adead relative from one's domicile or preventingscavengers from consuming the body. Moreelaborate patterns of mortuary behavior soonbegan to develop. Cut marks on the crania ofsome of the earliest members of our speciesshow that as early as 600,000 years ago peopleliving at the Bodo site in Ethiopia were de-fleshing the heads of the dead (White, 1986). Ithas been suggested that such practices reflect awidespread belief among our ancestors con-cerning the role of the brain in reproduction(La Barre, 1984).

By 50,000 to 100,000 years ago mortuarypractices had evolved into elaborate rituals thatinvolved painting bodies with red ochre and in-cluding food or animal remains with the bodyas offerings. Through time these cultural prac-tices became associated with increasingly com-plex religious beliefs that helped people copewith the uncertainties of death. Depositing util-itarian items and valuables such as ornamentsin graves became commonplace in the Upper

Paleolithic period. Such practices suggest con-tinued use of these items was anticipated in theafterlife. Expressions of such beliefs can befound in some of the earliest surviving reli-gious texts. The Egyptian Book of the Dead,for instance, provides spells and elaborate di-rections for use by the souls of the deceasedduring their journeys in the land of the dead(Allen, 1960; Ellis N, 1996).

The belief that the soul persists in an after-world has deep roots in Western religious tradi-tions. The ancient Greeks held elaboratefuneral rituals to help a dead person's soul findits way across the River Styx to a communityof souls in the underworld. Once in the under-world, there was continued communion be-tween the living and the dead. For example, thesoul of a dead person could be reborn in a newbody if their living family members continuedto attend to their needs by bringing them honeycakes and other special foods on ceremonialoccasions (Barber, 1988). By medieval timesmost people continued to view death as a semi-permanent state in which the living and thespirit of the dead person could maintain contactwith each other. Folktales about ghosts andcorpses coming to life were widespread andcontributed to the idea of the dead functioningin society with the living (Barber, 1988;Caciola, 1996). The issue of integrity of thecorpse and the relationship of this to the after-life dominated medieval discussions of thebody: salvation became equated with whole-ness, and hell with decay and partition of thebody (Bynum, 1995:114).

After the Reformation, conservative Protes-tant groups continued to emphasize the pro-found significance of a person's physicalremains after death. In fact, one of the moretroublesome issues facing Protestant reformersafter the abolition of purgatory in the early six-teenth century was the need to provide a ratio-nal explanation for the status of body and soulin the period intervening between death andresurrection (Spellman, 1994). One strategyfor dealing with this vexing problem is pro-vided by the constitution for the Old SchoolPresbyterian Church, published in 1822, which

asserts that the bodies of deceased members ofthe church "even in death continue united inChrist, and rest in the graves as in their beds,till at the last day they be again united withtheir souls ... the self same bodies of the deadwhich were laid in the grave, being then againraised up by the power of Christ" (Laderrnan,1 996:54).

Such beliefs in the continuance of life afterdeath remain prevalent in modern Western so-cieties (Cohen, 1992). Recent surveys showthat 25% oh European adults report havingcontact with the dead (Haraldsson and Hout-kooper, 1991), and a significant number ofAmericans believe in reincarnation (Donahue,1 993; Walter, 1993). About half of the people

i n the United States believe that hell is a realplace in which people suffer eternal damna-tion (Marty, 1997). In another survey, 80% ofthe North American population believes insome kind of an afterlife (Goldhaber, 1996;Tonne, 1996). Among Canadians, 4(1% be-lieve in the Devil and 43% in hell (Belief inthe Devil, 1995).

Surveys also show that, in spite of specula-tion about the secularizing effects of educationand academia, most highly educated people,including professors and scientists, are aboutas religious as other Americans. Anthropolo-gists are one oh the few groups that deviatesignificantly from the majority view that indi-vidual human beings continue to exist in somekind of an afterlife. Compared to faculty in thephysical sciences, anthropologists are almosttwice as likely to be irreligious, to never attendchurch, and one in five actually declare them-selves "opposed" to religion (lannaccone et al.,

1 998). This is significant in the context of theethical issues considered in this paper becauseit means that the values of the anthropologistswho do skeletal research will often differ dra-matically from those of descendants of the peo-ple they study.

Although the prevalence of conviction in anafterlife appears to have changed relatively lit-tle during the twentieth century, the culturalcontext in which it occurs has been dramati-cally transformed. The familiarity with death

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that characterized earlier societies in whichpeople were forced to confront the dead di-rectly on a daily basis has been replaced byavoidance of the dead. With the commercial-i zation of the burial process by the "death-care" industry in wealthy countries, traditionssuch as wakes and ritual preparation of thedead For burial by family members have beenreplaced by the processing of the dead in re-mote settings (Badonc, 1987; Horn, 1998;Rundblad, 1995). This cultural trend towardl ack of contact with the dead has greatly in-creased the cultural gulf between a public thathas little familiarity with death and skeletal re-searchers, such as bioarchaeologists, who con-front the dead on a daily basis.

THE HISTORY OF RESEARCHON HUMAN REMAINS

Ambivalence toward scientific research on hu-man remains has deep roots in Western soci-eties. From its onset, scientific research oil thedead has been the domain of physicians whowere often forced to work under clandestineconditions on the bodies of social outcasts. Theearliest recorded systematic dissections of a hu-man body were conducted in the first half ofthethird century B.C., by two Greeks, Herophilus ohChalcedon and Erasistratus of' Chios. Thesestudies were performed in Alexandria, a citywhere traditional Greek values were weakenedby Ptolcmic influences, and probably involvedvivisection and the use of condernned criminals(Von Staden, 1989: 52-53, 1992). In the ancientworld, scientific research of this kind was ex-tremely problematic because it violated Greco-Roman, Arabic, and early Judeo-Christianbeliefs about the afterlife, impurity, and pol-lution (Bynum, 1994; Fknoyan, 1994; VonStaden, 1992), In the Christian world, anatomi-cal studies of the dead were especially trouble-some because many people feared resurrectionwould be impossible if their body had been dis-sected. This belief derived from the convictionthat at resurrection the actual body is recon-nected with the soul. People thus feared that

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dissection would somehow interfere with thisprocess and leave the soul eternally wanderingaround in search of lost parts (Bynum, 1994).

During the Renaissance the strength of reli-gious sanctions against dissection began toweaken and, by the sixteenth century, surgeonsin Protestant countries such as England wereofficially given the authority to take the bodiesof hanged criminals for use in their anatomicalstudies. This practice had the dual purpose offurthering the healing arts and serving as a de-terrcnt to criminals who feared the desecrationof their bodies (I Iumphrey, 1973; Wilf, 1989).The repugnance of being dissected was sogreat that riots sometimes erupted after execu-tions over the disposition of the bodies. SamuelRichardson observed one of these spectacles:"As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead,

1 was much surprised, before such a number ofpeace-officers, to see the populace fall to haul-ing and pulling the carcasses with so muchearnestness, as to occasion several warm en-counters, and broken heads. These, I was told,were the friends of the person executed, or suchas, for the sake of tumult, chose to appear so,and sonic persons sent by private surgeons toobtain bodies for dissection. 'File contests be-tween these were fierce and bloody, and fright-ful to look at" (Richardson, 1987).

As appreciation for the medical value of thei nformation that could be gained through dis-section increased, so did the need for anatomi-cal specimens. Soon the demand for bodies foruse in teaching and research outstripped the le-gal supply of executed criminals, and physi-cians increasingly began to obtain cadavers

through robbing graves and hiring body-snatchers who were referred to as "resurrec-tionists" (Hutchens, 1997; Millican, 1992;Schultz, 1992). This practice was widespread

and persisted well into the twentieth century insome parts of the United States. The desire forbodies even led to the series of infamous mur-ders committed by William Burke and WilliamHare in Edinburgh in the 1820s, with the aimof supplying dissection subjects to Dr. RobertKnox, the anatomist. Hare turned kings evi-dence, Burke was hanged for his crimes, and

the incident led to controlling legislation inBritain.

Grave-robbing activities sometimes metwith violent public resistance. In 1788, for ex-ample, New Yorkers rioted far three days aftersome children peered through windows ol'thcSociety of the Hospital of the City of New Yorkand discovered medical students dissecting hu-man cadavers, one of whom turned out to betheir recently deceased mother. A mob of fivethousand eventually stormed the hospital andthe jail where several doctors had taken refuge.The militia had to be called in and finally dis-persed the crowd by firing muskets into it.

To avoid problems such as this, the profes-sional body snatchers hired by medical schoolsconcentrated on robbing the graves of the poorand powerless. The cemeteries of almshouseswere favorite targets and, in the United States,African-American graveyards were favored asplaces to plunder. Upon visiting Baltimore in1 835, Harriet Martincau commented that thebodies used for dissection were exclusivelythose of African Americans "because thewhites do not like it, and the coloured peoplecannot resist" (Martincau, 1838:140).

Although much of the early anatomical re-search focused on resolving issues concerningphysiology and surgical anatomy, from thebeginning skeletal studies with a decidedlyanthropological flavor were done to answerquestions related to human variation and adapta-tion. As early as 440 B.C., Herodotus (484- 425B.C. ) reported on an investigation into the effectof the environment on the strength of the skull:

On the field where this battle was fought 1saw a very wonderful thing which the nativespointed out to me. The bones of the slain ticscattered upon the field in two lots, those ofthe Persians in one place by themselves, asthe bodies lay at the first-those of theEgyptians in another place apart from them.If, then, you strike the Persian skulls, evenwith a pebble, they arc so weak, that youbreak a hole in them; but the Egyptian skullsare so strong, that you may stnite them with astone and you will scarcely break them in.They gave me the following reason for this

difference, which seemed to me likelyenough: The Egyptians (they said) from earlychildhood have the head shaved, and so by theaction of the sun the skull becomes thick andhard. (I lerodotus, 1990)

Much of the early anatomical work on hu-man variation had its roots in the belief' ofAristotle and his contemporaries that Naturewas organized hierarchically as a continuouschain. He was certain that all other animals ex-i sted for the sake of' Man. This view of the worldprovided a useful framework for comprehendingthe enormous complexity of the natural worldand also had the appeal of rationalizing the strat-ified nature of Greek society with powerfulrulers and a social elite at the top and the slavesat the bottom (Clutton-Brock, 1995).

By the Middle Ages this hierarchical viewof the world had been transformed into theChristian doctrine in which the world was seenas a perfect expression of God's will that de-scended in continuous succession through a"Great Chain of Being" from the perfection ofthe creator to the dregs of things at. the verybottom of creation. This perspective permeatedmuch of the work of early natural historianssuch as John Ray, who developed the doctrineof "natural theology," in which he argued thatthe power of God could be understood throughthe study of his creation, the natural world(Ray, 1692). In this context, the description ofbiological variation, including that foundamong humans, was a frankly religious activityin which the exploration of the fabric of thenatural world at both its macroscopic and mi-croscopic levels was seen as a way of revealingthe "divine architect's" plan for the universe.

The expanded view of biological diversityprovided by the specimens brought back byColumbus and other early European explorersstimulated a frenzy of species description andthe first detailed anatomical studies of the dif-ferences between apes and humans. - throughhis careful dissections of a chimpanzee,Edward Tyson (1650-1708) was able to de-bunk myths based on the reports of classicalauthors such as Homer, Herodotus, and Aris-

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totle that humankind contained several speciesi ncluding "satyrs," "sphinges," and "pygmies,"and in 1779 Charles Bonnet (1720--1793)wrote a detailed account of the orangutan inwhich he noted a close relationship to us, albeitwith the "lowest races" of our species (Bonnet,1 779; Clutton-Brock, 1995; Tyson, 1966).

After resolving the issue of whether humansand apes are members of the same species,Enlightenment scholars were still laced withthe problem of interpreting the previously un-suspected extent of human biological and cul-tural diversity revealed by European colonialexpansion into remote areas of the world.Linnaeus, for example, recognized five divi-sions of our genus, which included "Homomonstrosus," a catchall category for a varietyof' mythical creatures reported by early explor-ers. The debate soon took on a strong religiousflavor and began to focus upon how the empir-ical facts of human variation could be madecongruent with biblical accounts of Adarn andEve and the Tower of Babel. Interpretations ofhuman diversity became sharply divided be-tween the adherents of the theory of monogen-esis, which traced all humans to a single originin the Garden of Eden, and the adherents ofpolygenesis, who rejected the criteria of inter-fertility as the basis for the identification of bi-ological species and took the unorthodoxposition that Europeans, Africans, Asians, andNative Americans were derived from differentancestral forms.

By the end of the eighteenth century, evi-dence obtained from human skeletal remainsbegan to assume an increasingly important rolei n these debates over the origins and signifi-cance of human biological and cultural differ-ences. Cranial evidence (a total of 82 skulls),for instance, figured prominently in the famousdoctoral thesis of Johann Friedrich Blumen-bach (1752-1940) in which he argued thatmodern human diversity had arisen as a conse-quence of the degeneration of a primordial type(varietas primigenia) whose closest livingapproximation could be found in the people ofthe Caucasus Mountains (Blumenbach et al.,

1 86-5). Such studies generated considerable

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interest in human cranial variation, and soonsystematic efforts were begun to assemble re-search collections of human skeletal materialfrom throughout the world.

In the United States, research on populationdifferences in cranial morphology was domi-nated by Samuel George Morton (1799-1851),a physician from Philadelphia. Morton studiedmedicine at the University of Edinburgh wherehe was influenced by theories of polygenismand the hereditarian views of phrenologists thatwere in vogue at the time (Spencer, 1983).Underlying Morton's careful craniometric re-search was the basic theoretical assumption ofphrenology: differences in skull shape corre-sponded to differences in the shape of the brainand consequent differences in brain function.To test these theories, Morton amassed a largecollection of human crania from all over theworld that he compared using cranial measure-ments. From this he derived a hierarchy ofracial types with blacks at the bottom,American Indians intermediate, and whites atthe top (Morton, 1839).

Morton's craniometric approach to under-standing human variation set the stage formuch of the osteological research done byphysical anthropologists during the rest of thenineteenth century. Most of this work was ty-pological in orientation and focused upon theclassification of people into broad categoriessuch as brachycephalic (round-headed) ordolichocephalic (long-headed) based on ratiosof measurements. Although acceptance of themonogeneticists' theory that all humans tracetheir ancestry to a single origin gradually in-creased, especially after the publication ofDarwin's theory of natural selection, a typolog-ical, craniometrically oriented approach em-phasizing taxonomic description and definitionover functional interpretation persisted wellinto the middle of the twentieth century in thework of influential skeletal biologists such asAles Hrdlicka (1869-1943) and Ernest Hooton(1887-1954).

There are several reasons for the remarkabletenacity of the typological emphasis in researchon human skeletal remains. First, there is the

idea that human variation can be adequately ac-commodated by a few fundamentally differentracial types, which conveniently coincides withbeliefs in racial inferiority and superiority thatcontinue to persist in modern societies. Theidea of a straightforward relationship betweenthe shape of a person's skull and their geneticmakeup also was seductive to physical anthro-pologists because it meant that cranial differ-ences could be used as a powerful tool tofurther one of anthropology's principle goals:producing detailed reconstructions of popula-tion movements and historical relationships.Finally, there is a practical consideration behindthe persistence of the typological orientation ofskeletal research. Until recently, the computa-tional problems of someone attempting to sta-tistically compare quantitative observationsmade on skeletal collections of any meaningfulsize were practically insurmountable. The typo-logical approach, with all of its simplifyingassumptions and loss of information on within-group heterogeneity, offered a cost-effective al-ternative to this practical dilemma.

The last point is nicely illustrated by the an-thropometric work of Franz Boas (1858-1942),the founder of American anthropology and astrong opponent of simplistic hereditarian in-terpretations of human variation. Through hisanthropometric studies of Europeans who im-migrated to the United States, Boas showedthat the shape of the cranial vault, a trait nine-teenth-century racial typologists had fixatedupon, is highly responsive to environmental in-fluences and thus of limited value in taxonomicanalysis (Boas, 1912). Boas realized the poten-tial of anthropometric research for elucidatingthe cultural and biological history of ourspecies and from 1888 to 1903 worked to as-semble anthropometric data on 15,000 NativeAmericans and 2,000 Siberians (Jantz et al.,1992). In contrast to Hrdicka and many of hisother contemporaries, Boas realized the neces-sity of statistical analysis for understanding thevariability within these samples. Unfortunately,the computational capabilities of the data pro-cessing tools that were available at the begin-ning of the nineteenth century (i.e., pencil and

paper) made meaningful analysis of the infor-mation on human variation contained withinthis monumental collection of anthropometricobservations impossible (Jantz, 1995). Con-sequently, almost nothing was done with thesedata until a few years ago when availability ofcomputers with adequate data storage and pro-cessing capability made their analysis possible(see Pietrusewsky, Chapter 14).

During the past thirty years, physical an-thropology has finally escaped from themethodological and conceptual shackles ofnineteenth-century racial typology. Research onthe skeletal remains of earlier human popula-tions has entered a vibrant new phase in whichthe great potential Boas saw in studies of hu-man variation as a source of insights into the bi-ological and cultural evolution of humankind isbeginning to be realized. This paradigm shifthas involved replacing the futile nineteenth-century preoccupation with drawing stableboundaries around populations, whose biologi-cal and cultural makeup is constantly in flux,with new evolutionary ecological approachesthat recognize the complexity and adaptive sig-nificance of interactions between genetic vari-ability and developmental plasticity. Thistheoretical reorientation has resulted in a newbioarchaeological approach to the analysis ofskeletal remains from earlier human pop-ulations that uses cultural, biological, and pale-oenvironmental evidence to illuminate theprocesses of human adaptation (Larsen, 1997).With this new approach has come an increasingappreciation for the many ways the remains ofour ancestors can help us to both better under-stand and devise solutions to the many seem-ingly intractable problems of violence, disease,and social inequity that we currently face.

THE SOURCES OF SKELETALCOLLECTIONS

To fully appreciate the concerns that modernindigenous people have about collections ofhuman skeletons, it is necessary to understandthe historical and social context in which skele-

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tal collections have been made throughout his-tory. The practice of collecting human skeletalremains as war trophies and for religious pur-poses has deep historical roots. It has been ar-gued that taking the heads of the dead to obtaintheir power is among the earliest of ritual prac-tices (La Barre, 1984). In the past, the taking ofheads, scalps, and other body parts during war-fare was a widespread practice, especiallyamong Native Americans and Melanesians,and can nearly be considered a cultural univer-sal (Driver, 1969; Hamer, 1972; Olsen andShipman, 1994; Owsley et al., 1994; White andToth, 1991; Willey and Emerson, 1993).Although suppressed in modern societies, suchpractices continue in the form of the collectionof "trophy skulls" from battlefields by modernsoldiers (McCarthy, 1994; Sledzik and Ousley,1991).

Among Christians, the belief that proximityto the bones and other body parts of saintscould bring miracles was common as early asthe fourth century A.D. This use of human re-mains as objects of religious veneration gradu-ally resulted in the accumulation of substantialskeletal collections. By the ninth century the re-mains of martyrs had become so valuable thatcompetition between religious centers created aregular commerce that sometimes degeneratedto the point of melees between monks attempt-ing seize the bodies of martyrs by force of arms(Gauthier, 1986; Geary, 1978; Thurston, 1913).The belief that the miraculous powers of impor-tant religious figures could be accessed throughtheir bones stimulated a lively market in humanremains. At one point 19 churches claimed topossess the mandible of John the Baptist(Collin de Plancy, 1821). Philip II (1556-1598)of Spain, a zealous Catholic, commissioned anenvoy to collect the remains of as many saintsand martyrs as he could, and assembled a col-lection of 11 complete skeletons along withthousands of skulls, long bones, and other mis-cellaneous skeletal elements at his residence,the Escorial near Madrid (Wittlin, 1949). Beliefin the magical powers of human remains wasnot limited to those of Catholic saints. When anEgyptian mummy was obtained by Leipzig,

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Germany, in 1693 it soon became a tourist at-traction owing to the common belief "that itpierceth all parts, restores wasted limbs, con-sumption, heckticks, and cures all ulcers andcorruption" (Wittlin, 1949).

Until the middle of the eighteenth century,Europe had no museum collections in the mod-ern sense. Instead, there were vast collectionsheld by monarchs and the Catholic Church thatfunctioned as reliquaries, storehouses, andtreasuries. During the Enlightenment, a strongbelief in the power of empirical investigationsof the natural world as a method for the discov-ery of' God's laws brought with it a need formuseums whose purpose was the preservationof historical artifacts and natural objects forscientific scrutiny. At first these collectionstook the form of "curio cabinets" maintainedby wealthy aristocrats for their personal re-search and the edification of their friends.Many of these early collectors were physiciansand, owing to their professional interest in hu-man anatomy, they naturally included humanskeletons and preserved anatomical specimensin their cabinets. For example, the large collec-tion amassed by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753),the personal physician to Queen Anne andKing George 11, included a number of humanskeletons. Upon Sloane's death, these skeletonsand the rest of' his collection were bequeathedto the British Parliament at a nominal sum andserved as the nucleus of the British Museum'snatural history collection. In America, schol-arly associations such as The Library Companyof Philadelphia, which was formed in 1731 byBenjamin Franklin and his colleagues, began tomaintain collections that included anatomicalspecimens and, around the same time, thePennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia estab-lished its teaching cabinet with the acquisitionof a human skeleton and a series of anatomicalmodels (Orosz, 1990:16-17).

These collections of skeletons and anatomi-cal specimens were of great value because theymade it possible to provide instruction in surgi-cal anatomy without offending Christians whohad religious objections to the dissection of ca-davers. During the last half of the eighteenth

century, the inadequacies of the old system ofl earning anatomy by studying models and oc-casionally observing a demonstrator dissect acriminal's body became increasingly apparent.With the growth of medical knowledge, aspir-i ng surgeons began clamoring for more hands-on experience so they could avoid thehorrifying prospect of learning their tradethrough the butchery of their first living pa-tients. This desire was reinforced by a growingpublic recognition of the value of being oper-ated upon by someone with practical experi-cnce in dissection.

These social pressures resulted in an expo-nential increase in the demand for cadavers. Tomeet this need, "anatomical acts" were eventu-ally passed that expanded the legal sources ofcadavers to include the victims of duels, sui-cides, and, most importantly, unclaimed bod-i es. The demand was so great that this newlegal supply of bodies was often inadequateand, throughout the nineteenth century, med-ical schools were still enlisting the services ofbody snatchers to obtain their instructional ma-terials (Blake, 1955; Blakely et al., 1997; New-man, 1957).

Although the increase in dissections openedthe possibility of increasing the scope of skele-tal collections, this potential was not fully real-i zed. Collections were made of specimens withi nteresting anomalies and pathological condi-tions but, as a rule, the rest of the dissected per-son's skeleton was disposed of in what oftenseems to have been a cavalier fashion (Blakely,1 997:167). From what can be discerned fromthe remnants of nineteenth-century medicalschool collections that survive today, little effortwas made to create carefully documented skele-tal collections of known age and sex for use inassessing the normal range of human variation.The failure to create such systematic collectionsprobably stems in part from the prevalence ofracist views that minimized the importance ofvariation within groups and exaggerated thesignificance of population differences.

The immensity of the carnage brought bythe Civil War profoundly affected attitudes to-ward the dead in the United States (Laderman,

1996). The war desensitized people to deathand this made it possible to view corpses withincreasing detachment. At the same time, thelogistic problems the military faced in preserv-ing the bodies of so many dead soldiers fortransportation back to their families turnedcorpses into commodities that needed to beprocessed by professionals such as doctors andundertakers. In this context of mass slaughter,rising professionalism, and growing rejectionof religious beliefs in the resurrection of thebody, surgeons struggling to devise standard-ized treatments for the sometimes horrifyinginjuries they faced began to view autopsies andother medical research on dead soldiers as anethical imperative. To accommodate this re-search the Army Medical Museum wasfounded in 1862 as a repository for thousandsof skeletal specimens, preserved organs, pho-tographs, and other medical records obtainedduring the treatment and autopsy of militarycasualties (Barnes et al., 1870; Otis andWoodward, 1865).

At the close of the Civil War, army doctorsshifted the focus of their collecting activitiestoward medical concerns arising from theIndian wars in the western United States, suchas the treatment of arrow wounds (Bill, 1862;Parker, 1883; Wilson, 1901). One aspect of thiswork involved the collection of Native Amer-ican crania and artifacts from battlefields andcemeteries. This was implemented through aletter from the Surgeon General's Office, datedJanuary 13, 1868, that stated: "Will you allowme to ask your kind interposition in urgingupon the medical officers in your departmentsthe importance of collecting for the ArmyMedical Museum specimens of Indian Craniaand of Indian Weapons and Utensils, so far asthey may be able to procure them." Other doc-uments make it clear that these collectionswere made under the protest of the Indianswhose graves were being raided and that suchactivities could even result in further hostilitieswith the Indians (Bieder, 1992). Although gov-ernment sanctioned grave robbing of this kindeventually stopped, it understandably continuesto provoke outrage among the descendants of

THE SOURCES OF SKELETAL COLLECTIONS

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the people whose bodies were stolen (RidingIn, 1992).

Beginning in the middle of the nineteenthcentury, large public natural history museumsbegan to be established whose goals were bothpopular education and scholarly research(Orosz, 1990). These museums provided an in-stitutional framework within which the largeskeletal collections could be consolidated fromthe smaller private collections of physiciansand wealthy amateur archaeologists. These newmuseums had the resources necessary to main-tain staffs of professional research scientistsand to augment their osteological collectionsthrough purchases from private collectors andthe sponsorship of archaeological expeditionsthroughout the world.

In the United States, the most important nat-ural history museums from the perspective ofcollections of human skeletal remains are theSmithsonian Institution, founded in 1846, thePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Eth-nology, founded 1866, the American Museumof Natural History, founded in 1869, theHarvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology andEthnology, founded in 1866, the ColumbianMuseum of Chicago (now the Chicago FieldMuseum), founded in 1893, the Lowie Museumof Anthropology (now the Phoebe HearstMuseum), founded in 1901, and the San DiegoMuseum of Man, founded in 1915. During thetwentieth century the number of museums withsignificant holdings of human skeletal remainsrapidly increased and by 1998 about 700 federaland private institutions possessed skeletal re-mains from an estimated 110,000 individuals.

The research value of these collectionsvaries enormously depending upon the condi-tions under which they were collected. Owingto the cranial typology orientation of nine-teenth-century physicians, most of the materialcollected before the beginning of the twentiethcentury consists of isolated crania, lacking as-sociated mandibles or infracranial remains.Because of the predisposition of these re-searchers to interpret human variation within aframework of stable types that were compara-tively immune to environmental influences,

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most of them lack adequate provenience in-formation and are simply labeled in terms ofpreconceived racial categories or broad geo-graphical regions. All of these factors greatlyreduce the value of such collections for re-search purposes. Fortunately, most of the skele-tal material in museums derives from the workof professional archaeologists and is associatedwith at least some contextual information thatallows the individual to be placed in a mean-ingful historical, environmental, and culturalcontext. This type of information is essentialfor modern bioarchaeological research, whichrelies heavily on contextual information to re-construct the cultural ecology of earlier humanpopulations.

During the first half of the twentieth cen-tury, several visionary anatomists realized thevalue of having skeletons from individuals ofknown age, sex, and ethnic background for usein anthropological and forensic research on theeffects that environmental and genetic factorshave on health, disease, and morphologicalvariation. Working in conjunction with theteaching programs of medical schools, theseresearchers carefully recorded anthropometricdata, vital statistics, health histories, and otherrelevant information on the people scheduledfor dissection. Afterwards they prepared theirskeletons for curation in research collections.Three of the largest of these dissection roomcollections were established in the UnitedStates, at the Washington University School ofMedicine in St. Louis, the Western ReserveUniversity in Cleveland, and Howard Univer-sity in Washington, D.C.

A central figure in the creation of thesecollections is William Montague Cobb(1904-1990). Cobb, an African-American,who was an acknowledged activist leader in theAfrican American community, realized thevalue that empirical data on human variationhas as an antidote to racism (see also Ubelaker,Chapter 2). After receiving his medical degreeat Howard University, he did postgraduatestudies at the Western Reserve Universitywhere he helped T. Wingate Todd (1885-1938)assemble that university's skeletal collection.

After writing a doctoral dissertation on anthro-pological materials, which included informa-tion on the geographic and ethnic origins of thepeople who contributed their skeletons to theWestern Reserve collection, Cobb returned toWashington where he created a similar collec-tion at Howard University (Cobb, 1936). Aprolific author and dedicated teacher ofanatomy, Cobb used his understanding of hu-man biology, which in part was derived fromdissections and skeletal research, to improvethe health and reinforce the civil rights ofAfrican Americans (Cobb, 1939; Cobb, 1948;Rankin-Hill and Blakey, 1994).

In Great Britain and Europe, a different ap-proach has been taken to the creation of knownage and sex skeletal collections for use in an-thropological research. The crypts outsideSaint Bride's Church, London, were disturbedthrough bombing during World War II. Res-toration of the church has resulted in a docu-mented collection of skeletal remains datingfrom the mid-eighteenth century (Huda andBowman, 1995; Scheuer and Bowman, 1995).Similar collections of people of known age andsex from historic cemeteries have been estab-lished in Coimbra, Portugal (Cunha, 1995),Lisbon, Portugal, Geneva, Switzerland (Gem-merich, 1997) and Hallstatt, Austria (Sjovold,1990, 1993). However, a great many anatomi-cal collections of skeletons of nineteenth- andtwentieth-century individuals exist in anatomydepartments and medical schools throughoutEurope, Britain, and other countries.

THE VALUE OF HUMANSKELETAL REMAINS

In the ongoing debate over the disposition andscientific analysis of ancient human remains inmuseum collections, there is a tendency for theethical issues surrounding skeletal researchand the maintenance of skeletal collections tobe reduced to simplistic oppositions: scienceversus religion, right versus wrong, and so on.Although framing the complex social issuesunderlying the debate in this way may be polit-

ically expedient, it is counterproductive foranyone seeking a solution that balances theconcerns of descendants against those of thescientific community.

From my brief discussion of the evolutionof beliefs about human remains, it is obviousthat the details of the rituals people have de-vised for the treatment of the dead have variedenormously among the cultures of the worldthrough time. The practice of funeral rites byfriends and relatives and the use of a method ofdisposing of the body appear to be human uni-versals but, beyond that, there is little unifor-mity (Brown, 1991; Murdock, 1945). Thisdiversity of beliefs about how the dead shouldbe treated poses ethical dilemmas for bioar-chaeologists when their scientific work con-flicts with the beliefs of the descendants of thepeople whose remains they study.

One approach to resolving disputes over re-search on ancient skeletal remains is to viewsuch disagreements as cultural issues arisingfrom competing value systems (Goldstein andKintigh, 1990). Conceiving of disputes overthe treatment of the dead as products of con-flicting value systems avoids polemics andself-righteous posturing in which each side bat-tles for moral superiority and instead promotescommunication and mutual understanding.This can eventually result in the discovery ofsolutions that are consistent with the value sys-tems of both parties in the dispute.

The only justification for the study of skele-tal remains from earlier human populations isthat such research yields information that isuseful to modern people. Although the value ofskeletal research seems self-evident to the peo-ple who conduct it, there are many indigenouspeople who feel that such work is not only use-less, but also extremely harmful owing to thedamage it does to them and the spirits of theirancestors. This conflict between the values sci-entists and descendant groups attach to humanremains is central to the most important ethicaldilemmas bioarchaeologists face. Since mutualunderstanding is a prerequisite for finding acommon ground between these apparently in-commensurable world views, it is useful to

THE VALUE OF HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS

13

briefly describe the values scientists and de-scendant groups attach to ancient human re-mains.

Bioarchaeologists focus their research onancient human skeletal remains, not out of idlescientific curiosity, but instead because theybelieve that the information contained withinthe remains of our ancestors is of great value tomodern people. Human skeletal remains are aunique source of information on the geneticand physiological responses our ancestorsmade to the challenges posed by past naturaland sociocultural environments. Consequently,they provide an extremely valuable adaptiveperspective on the history of our species.

Most of what we know about our recent his-tory is based on inferences derived throughanalysis of artifacts, documents, oral histories,and other products of human cultural activity.Owing to their symbolic content, such culturalartifacts are difficult to interpret and often con-sistent with multiple, sometimes contradictoryviews of the past. The subjective aspects of at-tempting to interpret cultural artifacts from theperspective of our current cultural milieu arewell recognized: Historical works often revealmore about the cultural values and political bi-ases of the historian than they do about the re-ality of the historical event being described. Allhistorians are products of the culture in whichthey live, and they are always selective in whatthey report.

Because of its biological basis in the physi-ological processes of growth, development,and acclimatization to environmental change,the information about interactions with pastenvironments encoded in human remains pro-vides an extremely valuable comparative basisfor evaluating interpretations of the past basedon artifacts, documents, and other culture-based sources. The historical data provided byskeletal studies are of such great value becausethe methodological problems inherent in ex-tracting evidence from a skeleton are com-pletely different from those historians facewhen they attempt to interpret the historicalsignificance of the cultural products withwhich they work. The only way we can reduce

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the cultural biases that distort our understand-ing of past events is through collecting a diver-sity of evidence from sources that aresusceptible to different types of interpretativeerror. The greater the diversity of the evidencewe have about the past, the easier it is to ruleout alternative interpretations that are unlikelyto reflect actual events. By using a series ofdata sources that, standing alone, would beopen to many different interpretations, it is inthis way possible to triangulate on what reallyhappened in the past.

The unique perspective that skeletal evi-dence provides on the history of our speciesmakes it a potent weapon against cultural rel-ativists and historical revisionists who viewthe past as a source of raw materials they canexploit to refashion history into whatever nar-rative is currently considered au courant orpolitically expedient. In some schools of post-modernist thought, history is viewed as a sym-bolic construct devoid of any objective truth:all we are left with is an endless process ofconstructing conflicting narratives about thepast that are all of equal merit or are only ofmerit because they are different. In some rari-fied corners of the humanities, the possibilityof knowing with certainty that voluminouslydocumented historical events such as theHolocaust actually occurred is actively de-bated (Braun, 1994; Friedman, 1998; Jordan,1995; Kellner, 1994). In the world of thesetheorists, people interested in discoveringwhat happened in the Holocaust are doomed toan academic life of continuously revisualizingand recontextualizing subjective impressionsof subjective descriptions of the slaughter ofmillions of people into new, contradictory,and, from their perspectives, more meaningfulimaginations of the past.

In contrast to the symbolic problems inher-ent in historical reconstructions based uponwritten records and oral histories, humanskeletal remains provide a direct source of evi-dence about the lives and deaths of ancient andmodern people that is, at a fundamental level,free from cultural bias (Walker, 1997). Theskeletons of the people buried row upon row at

concentration camps such as Terezin, the racksof skulls from the Cambodian killing fields atTuol Sleng Prison, and the cut marks on theskeletons of the hundreds of massacred prehis-toric Native Americans unceremoniouslyburied at the Crow Creek site in South Dakotaspeak volumes about real historical events thatended the lives of real people.

In certain respects, bones do not lie. To givea specific example from my own research, thepresence of lesions indicative of severe, re-peated physical abuse in the skeletons of chil-dren murdered by their parents says somethingvery specific about a history of traumatic expe-riences that a child suffered during its short life(Walker, 2000; Walker et al., 1997). Althoughmultiple "narratives" can be constructed basedon the presence of such lesions (the child wasextraordinarily clumsy or accident prone, thechild's parents repeatedly beat him over a pro-longed period until he died, and so on), at afundamental level such skeletal evidence sayssomething indisputable about a physical inter-action that took place between the dead childand his or her physical environment. Unlikewritten records or oral histories, human re-mains are not culture-dependent symbolic con-structs. Instead they provide an extraordinarilydetailed material record of actual physical in-teractions that occurred between our ancestorsand their natural and sociocultural environ-ments. As such, human remains are extremelyvaluable sources of evidence for reconstructingwhat actually happened in the past.

This esoteric view that bioarchaeologistshold concerning the central role that collec-tions of human skeletal remains play in helpingus to obtain an objective view of history is notwidespread. The vast majority of the world'spopulation views human remains with a mix-ture of morbid fascination and dread becausethey serve as such vivid reminders of one'sown mortality and impending death. The sym-bolic saliency of directly confronting a deadperson has been deftly exploited for a diversityof religious, political, and economic purposes.Throughout the world, in many different set-tings, human remains are placed on public dis-

play and used in ways designed to foster groupcohesion and legitimize religious or politicalauthority. During times of social instability, itis common for these same remains to be de-stroyed or humiliated to weaken and disrupt thegroup solidarity they once fostered (Cantwell,1 990). The controversy over the continued dis-play of Lenin's remains in Red Square and thedisposition of the recently discovered remainsof Czar Nicholas II and his family providegood examples of how human remains can beused as tools to advance or suppress politicali deas and facilitate or disrupt social cohesion( Caryl, 1998; Fenyvesi, 1997).

The strong symbolic power of human re-mains has encouraged people to devise anamazing number of uses for them. Throughoutthe world, displays of human remains areamong the most effective tools for luring peo-ple into museums. At the British Museum, forexample, postcards of mummies rival theRosetta Stone in public popularity (Beard1 992). In many places displays of human re-mains are such popular tourist attractions thatthey have become the mainstays of localeconomies. The Museo de los Momias inMexico, where the naturally mummified bod-i es of poor people who could not afford to pur-chase permanent graves are on display, is toutedas Mexico's second most popular museum,bested only by the anthropological museum inMexico City (Osmond, 1998). Two similar ex-amples are the awe-inspiring creativity of dis-plays of thousands of disinterred human bonesi n the All Saints Cemetery Chapel near KutnaHora in the Czech Republic and in the Churchof the Capuchins in Rome (Fig. 1.1).

In some cases the symbolic value of retain-i ng human remains for display is sufficient tooverride religious sanctions against it. MedievalChinese Ch'an Buddhists practiced mummifi-cation of eminent priests as demonstrations ofthe relationship between spiritual attainmentand the incorruptibility of the body even thoughthey espoused a religious doctrine that accordedlittle value to the corpse. A similar example isthe recent decision that the value of the displayof bones from Khmer Rough victims at the Tuol

`THE VALUE OF HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS15

Sleng Prison Museum as evidence of theCambodian genocide outweighed Buddhist reli-gious beliefs that mandate cremation (Erlanger,1988; Peters, 1995). The denial of burial inChristian countries as a form of posthumouspunishment and object lesson for the living hasalready been mentioned. In England the headsof people such as Oliver Cromwell were dis-played on poles erected on the roof of the GreatStone Gate of London Bridge, and gibbets con-taining the rotting bodies of famous piratessuch as Captain Kidd were strategically placedalong the banks of the Thames to greet sailorsas they returned from the sea. During the nine-teenth century, the heads of Miguel Hidalgoand three other leaders of the Mexican war ofindependence met a similar fate when theyhung on public display in cages for ten years asgrim reminders of the folly of revolution.Ironically, these same skulls of Mexico's found-ing fathers have recently been resurrected andagain put on public display for the opposite pur-pose: they rest next to each other under glass onred velvet in a dimly lit crypt where they re-mind school children of the heroism of thecountry's founders (Osmond, 1998).

As is illustrated by the case of Hidalgo'sskull, the strong symbolic value of human re-mains endow those who control them with apowerful tool that can be used to vividly ex-press multiple, sometimes contradictory, mean-ings. Owing to this great symbolic power, it isnot surprising that issues surrounding the con-trol, treatment, and disposition of human re-mains pose some of the most vexing ethicaldilemmas skeletal biologists face. Bioarchae-ologists do not view human remains primarilyas symbols. Instead they value them as sourcesof historical evidence that are key to under-standing what really happened during the bio-logical and cultural evolution of our species.This lack of concern with symbolic issues is instark contrast to the richness of the symbolicconnotations human skeletons have for mostpeople. This conflict in worldviews is espe-cially acute in areas of the world that were sub-jected to European colonization. In NorthAmerica, Hawaii, and Australia, where the

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Figure 1.1

The interior of the All Saints Cemetery Chapel in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutna Hora in the CzechRepublic. The chapel is decorated with the bones of some 40,000 people whose remains were excavated by froma nearby graveyard by Monks of the Cistercian order.

indigenous people suffered the greatest devas-tation at the hands of European colonists, an-cient human remains have assumed greatsignificance as symbols of cultural integrityand colonial oppression. In this postcolonialworld gaining control over ancestral remains isincreasingly considered essential to the sur-vival and revitalization of indigenous cultures.

That the views of indigenous people con-cerning this issue have changed dramaticallyduring the past forty years is amply illustratedby archaeological reports that describe the en-thusiastic participation of Native Americans inthe excavation of burials, some of whose studyby bioarchaeologists are currently under dis-pute (Benson and Bowers, 1997; Brew, 1941;

Fewkes, 1898; Hewett, 1953; Hrdlicka, 1930a,1930b, 1931; Hurt et al., 1962; Judd, 1968;Neuman, 1975; Roberts, 1931; Smith, 1971;Smith et al., 1966). As late as the 1960s, Inuitpeople in the Northwest Territory of Canadawho I worked with seemed little concernedabout the excavation of ancient skeletal re-mains. In fact, they were extremely cordial tothe members of the expedition I was on and as-sisted us in any way they could. Although theyexpressed mild concerns about carrying humanskeletons in their boats, they otherwise weresupportive of and expressed considerable inter-est in our bioarchaeological work.

To comprehend the urgency of the currentconcerns Native Americans have about thetreatment of their ancestral remains it is neces-sary to understand the magnitude of the recentdisruptions of their cultures. Beginning at theend of the nineteenth century, systematic at-tempts began to be made to separate NativeAmerican children from their families, sup-press their Native identities, and inculcate themwith Christian values (Ellis C, 1996; Loma-waima, 1993). Simultaneously, the isolationthat formerly characterized life on the remotereservations in marginal areas that the govern-ment relegated them to began to break downowing to the development of interstate high-ways, radio, television, and the intrusions oftourists. These developments have had such adevastating effect on the transmission of tradi-tional beliefs and practices that the remnants ofearlier times preserved in museums have in-creasingly become a cultural focus. Controlover these collections is an important politicalissue for Native Americans because, by gainingcontrol over the biological and cultural remainsof their ancestors, they can begin to reasserttheir cultural identity within the dominantEuro-American culture.

When viewed within this context of culturalmarginalization and repression, it is easy to seewhy many indigenous people see little value inwhat to them are the very nebulous goals ofbioarchaeologists. Zimmerman (Ubelaker andGrant, 1989) presents evidence supporting thedepth of Indian concern about the retention of

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museum collections. He cites an unpublishedsurvey that John S. Sigstad conducted in 1972of Indian tribes in the BIA Aberdeen region.All respondents agreed that human remains inmuseums should be reburied, 95% indicatedbones should not be displayed in museums, andonly 35% of the respondents believed that hu-man remains should be excavated for scientificresearch (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).

Some indigenous people have the erroneousbelief that only the remains of their ancestorsare studied and cite this as a reflection of theracist attitudes of the European colonists whorobbed them of their land (Tobias, 1991;Vizenor, 1986). They feel that such researchdegrades them by singling them out to be"made fun of and looked at as novelties"(Mihesuah, 1996; Walters, 1989). Bioarchae-ologists respond to this charge by pointing outthe vast collections of non-Native Americanskeletal remains in European museums and ar-guing that it would be racist not to have collec-tions of Native American remains in NewWorld museums, since this would imply thatknowledge of the history of the indigenouspeople of the New World had nothing to con-tribute to the understanding of our commonpast (Ubelaker and Grant, 1989).

Some indigenous people reject the epistemol-ogy of science, at least as it applies to their his-tory and cultural affairs, and instead prefer toview the past as it is revealed through traditionalways of knowing, such as oral history, legend,myth, and appeal to the authority of reveredleaders. For people with this perspective, scien-tific research directed toward documenting thepast is not only superfluous, but also potentiallyculturally subversive owing to the capacity ofscientific evidence to conflict with traditionalbeliefs about the past and, in this way, underminethe authority of traditional religious leaders.From this perspective, scientific investigationsinto the history of indigenous cultures are simplyanother manifestation of the attempts of an op-pressive imperialist colonial power to controland weaken the belief systems of indigenouspeople so that they will be easier to exploit(Bray, 1995; Dirlik, 1996; Riding In, 1996).

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In academia, this position clearly resonateswith radical postmodernist theorists of the hu-manities who believe that reconstructing historyas an objective reality is a hopeless endeavorand instead argue that history is a symbolicweapon that ethical people should use to helpthe marginal political and cultural constituenciesof the world in their struggles against the hold-ers of power (Hodder et al., 1995).

This tension between traditional and scien-tific views of the past has recently beenbrought into sharp focus through the contro-versy over the disposition of the 9,300-year-oldhuman remains found at the Kennewick site onthe banks of the Columbia River in WashingtonState (Hastings and Sampson, 1997; Lemon-ick, 1996; Morell, 1998; Petit, 1998; Preston,1997; Slayman, 1997). Scientists who have ex-amined these remains say they possess charac-teristics unlike those of modern NativeAmericans. They believe that research into rea-sons for this difference has the potential tomake an important contribution to our under-standing of the history of humankind. Mem-bers of the five Native American tribes thathave claimed the skeleton, on the other hand,believe that the question of the cultural affilia-tion of this individual has already been re-solved by their elders who tell them that theyhave lived in the area where the skeleton wasfound since the beginning of creation. Thecomplexity of this dispute increased furtherwhen members of the Asutru Folk Assembly, atraditional European pagan religion, sued forthe right to use scientific research to decide ifthis individual is one of their ancestors. Theyclaim that "It's not an accident that he came tous at this time and place ... Our job is to listento (the bones) and hear what they have to say"(Lee, 1997).

Modern indigenous people often frame suchdisputes over the power to control the interpre-tation of tribal history in spiritual terms. It is acommon pan-Indian religious belief that allmodern Native Americans are spirituallylinked to all other Indian people living anddead (Walters, 1989). Another widely held be-lief is that space is spherical and time is cycli-

cal (Clark, 1997). All living Indians thus have aresponsibility for the spiritual well-being oftheir ancestors that requires them to assure thattheir ancestors are buried in the ground wherethey can be reintegrated into the earth andcomplete the circle of life and death (Bray,1995; Halfe, 1989). Contemporary NativeAmericans who hold these beliefs argue that,so long as ancestral spirits are suffering be-cause their bones are not buried in the earth,living people will continue to suffer a myriadof adverse consequences. Thus, any activity in-consistent with reburial, such as excavation,study, museum curation, and storage, is consid-ered an act of desecration and disrespect. Forindigenous people with such views, there is nomiddle ground upon which scientific researchcan be conducted on human skeletal remainsand associated artifacts. These remains are ofgreat spiritual and psychological importanceand their reburial is required to heal thewounds of colonial oppression (Emspak, 1995;Murray and Allen, 1995)

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIESOF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS

Given these sharply polarized views concern-ing the value of scientific research on humanremains, what are the ethical responsibilities ofskeletal biologists? On one hand, we havebioarchaeologists who believe that the histori-cal evidence obtained from human remains iscritical for defending humankind against thehistorical revisionist tendencies of repressive,genocidal political systems, and, on the other,we have indigenous people who believe thatthe spirits of their ancestors are being torturedon the shelves of museums by racist, genoci-dal, colonial oppressors. If we can accept therelativist perspective that both of these viewshave some validity, then it is possible to envis-age a compromise that gives due recognition toboth value systems.

Although there is still a broad spectrum ofperceptions of what is right and what is wrongamong modern people, with the precipitous

decline in cultural diversity that has occurredowing to the expansion of modern communi-cation systems, we are seeing a worldwideconvergence of values, at least concerning cer-tain areas of human affairs (Donaldson, 1992).These shared values are developing as part ofthe evolution of the transnational political andeconomic systems that are beginning to unitethe world's disparate cultures. The Declarationof Human Rights of the United Nations, forexample, provides a generally accepted set ofrules for ethical human behavior that mostpeople can accept in principle, if not in prac-tice. They include recognition of the right toequality, freedom from discrimination, free-dom from torture and degrading treatment,freedom from interference with privacy, andfreedom of belief and religion (UN, 1948).Other attempts to devise a set of ethical rulesthat encompass what some people believe isemerging as a culturally universal system ofmoral principles include widespread humanis-tic values such as the recognition that it iswrong to be indifferent to suffering, that toler-ance of the beliefs of others is good, and thatpeople ought to be free to live as they choosewithout having their affairs deliberately inter-fered with by others (Hatch, 1983).

The cultural values expressed by the asser-tion of basic human rights and universal moralprinciples such as these can be criticized ashegemonic attempts to use Western culturali deas as tools for gaining power and politicalcontrol for transnational business interests. Forexample, the Chinese government has recentlycriticized allegations concerning its suppres-sion of the rights of political dissidents as in-sensitive to unique Chinese cultural valuessuch as obedience to authority, collectivism,family, and other dispositions (Li, 1998).

This issue of developing universal, govern-ment-sponsored standards of ethical behavioris of more than theoretical interest to bioar-chaeologists since it is commonly asserted thatthe maintenance of skeletal collections for usei n scientific research is a violation of a funda-mental human right. For example, Article X ofthe draft of the "Inter-American Declaration on

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS

1 9

the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" approved bythe Inter-American Commission on HumanRights of the Organization of American Statesin a section entitled "Spiritual and ReligiousFreedom" specifically states that when "sacredgraves and relics have been appropriated bystate institutions, they shall be returned" to in-digenous people (IACHR, 1995).

At the opposite end of the spectrum of polit-ical inclusiveness and governmental authorityfrom the UN and OAS statements on humanrights are the ethics statements that profes-sional associations develop for their membersto use as guides for the decisions they makeduring their everyday activities. The decline inthe capacity of organized religions and othertraditional social institutions to impose a unify-ing set of ethical principles acceptable to mod-ern multicultural societies, and the constantstream of ethical challenges posed by newtechnological developments has stimulatedenormous interest in the formulation of stan-dards for ethical conduct in many areas of pro-fessional activity (Behi and Nolan, 1995;Bulger, 1994; Fluehr-Lobban, 1991; Krucke-berg, 1996; Kuhse et al., 1997; Kunstadter,1980; Lynott, 1997; Muller and Desmond,1992; Navran, 1997; Parker, 1994; Pellegrino,1995; Pyne, 1994; Salmon, 1997; Scanlon andGlover, 1995; Schick, 1998).

Many professional associations and govern-mental agencies have developed ethical guide-lines for use by researchers in the biomedicaland social sciences that contain information di-rectly relevant to resolving the ethical dilem-mas bioarchaeologists face when they workwith ancient human remains (AAA, 1986,1997; AIA, 1991, 1994; CAPA, 1979; MRCC,1998; NAPA, 1988; NAS, 1995; SAA, 1996;SAP, 1983; SPA, 1976; UNESCO, 1995).

Although only a few of these statementsdeal specifically with issues surrounding thestudy of human remains, a comparison of theprinciples for ethical behavior they espousesuggests considerable agreement on a few fun-damental rules that can be used to guide re-searchers who work with ancient humanremains: (1) human remains should be treated

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with dignity and respect, (2) descendantsshould have the authority to control the dis-position of the remains of their relatives, and(3) owing to their importance for understand-ing the history of our species, the preservationof collections of archaeological collections ofhuman remains is an ethical imperative.

Each of these principles is based upon acomplicated set of value judgments whose im-plications for the real-world practices of skele-tal biologists depend in many ways upon thecultural lens through which they are viewed.For example, what is considered the dignifiedtreatment of human remains varies widely de-pending on a person's cultural background.These ethical principles also contain an inher-ent contradiction since recognizing the rightsof descendants may at times conflict with thepreservation ethic.

Respect for Human Dignity

The ethical principle that human remainsshould be treated with respect and dignity isconsistent with, and can be seen as an exten-sion of, respect for human dignity, which is thecardinal ethical principle for modern researchon human subjects in the biomedical and socialsciences (Margareta, 1996; MRCC, 1998;UNESCO, 1995). This ethical principle isbased upon the belief that it is unacceptable totreat human remains solely as a means (mereobjects or things), because doing so fails to re-spect the intrinsic human dignity of the personthey represent and thus impoverishes all of hu-manity. An argument can be made that sincethe remains of dead people are just "decayingorganic matter" that "feels nothing, conceptu-alizes nothing, has no interests, and cannot suf-fer," in other words, that there is no person hereto respect or disrespect, the respect is not forthe body, but the antemortem person fromwhom the remains are derived (Lynch, 1990).Although it is true that, for most skeletal biolo-gists, human remains are viewed as deperson-alized and desanctified, there is still generalagreement that they are nevertheless highlymeaningful and should be treated with dignity

and respect (Buikstra, 1981; Ubelaker andGrant, 1989).

A skeptic might question the wisdom of ex-tending the concept of human dignity to thedead: What does the treatment of human re-mains have to do with human rights or humandignity? In view of the atrocities currently be-ing perpetrated on helpless people by repressivegovernments throughout the world, would it notbe more productive to focus the fight for humanrights on living people who could actually ben-efit from the results? In my view, a convincingargument can be made that, although the humanbeing that skeletal remains are derived from nolonger exists, their former intimate associationwith a living person is more than sufficient toearn them respectful treatment. The logic of thisargument is similar to that used by animal rightsactivists who admit that, although animals bydefinition do not have human rights, their ill-treatment does demean humans and thus hasimplications for human behavior (McShea,1994; Man's Mirror, 1991). In the same way itcan be argued that disrespectful treatment ofhuman remains is morally repugnant because ofits potential to desensitize people in a way thatis likely to encourage a lack of respect for andconsequent ill-treatment of the living (Grey,1983:105-153).

If we accept the premise that it is unethicalto treat human remains with disrespect, we arestill faced with the problem that respectfultreatment is a highly subjective concept. Thecultures. of the world have devised an enor-mousvariety ways of respecting the dead thatinclude hanging the skulls of close relativesfrom the rafters of huts, using skulls of parentsas pillows, and letting vultures feed upon deadrelatives. Some modern people believe thatpumping dead relatives full of chemicals,dressing them up, and burying them in theground is respectful. Others believe that incin-erating them, grinding up what's left in a mill,and putting the resulting bone meal in a card-board box is respectful. In the cultural contextof scientific research, respect for human re-mains derives not only from their associationwith a person who was once alive, but also

from an appreciation of the information aboutthe past they can yield. To a scientist, respectfultreatment of human remains includes takingmeasures to insure the physical integrity of theremains and the documentation associated withthem, avoiding treatments that will contami-nate or degrade their organic and inorganicconstituents, and so on.

These convoluted academic argumentsabout the definition of and justification fortreating human remains with respect, of course,seem bizarre to indigenous people who viewancestral remains not as inanimate objects de-void of life but instead as living entities that are

imbued with ancestral spirits. From the per-spective of some Native Americans, for exam-ple, ancient human skeletons are "not justremains, they're not bone to be studied, you'redealing with spirits as you touch those remains"(Augustine, 1994). As Rachel Craig, a NativeAlaskan put it, "I feel an obligation to give backto them, to speak for them. Our grandmothershave told us the importance of the spirit world.The spirits of those people cannot rest andmake their progress in the spirit world unlessthey know that those bones are put back in theearth where they belong. That is our teaching"(Craig, 1994). This same view of the retentionof skeletons in museums as interfering with theafterlife and separating the spirits of the deadfrom the community of the living is forcefullyexpressed by William Tallbull, a member of theNorthern Cheyenne tribe: "We talk about peo-ple coming home. When the people came homefrom the museum and are buried at home, theyall go and visit every house. This is where thejoy comes in. They are home. They are here.They walk around through the village and be-come part of us again. That's all we are asking"(Tallbull, 1994).

Descendant Rights

Since disputes over who should have the rightto control the disposition of ancient human re-mains are central to many of the ethical dilem-mas bioarchaeologists face, it is useful toconsider this issue in as broad a perspective as

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS 2 1

possible. Giving close relatives authority tomake decisions about the disposition of theremains of the recent dead appears to be a cul-tural universal. Only in exceptional circum-stances, such as the special dispositionsmandated for the bodies of executed criminalsas part of their punishment, and the control thatcoroners are given over bodies that might yieldevidence relevant to legal proceedings, is theright of close relatives to decide the dispositionof a body denied. Many cultures have specialrules governing the disposition of the bodies ofpeople who die under unusual circumstances,and some of these make exceptions to the ruleof kin control over the dead. Herodotus, for ex-ample, observed that the Egyptians gave spe-cial treatment to the bodies of people whodrown in the Nile or were eaten by crocodiles:"No one may touch the corpse, not even any ofthe friends or relatives, but only the priests ofthe Nile, who prepare it for burial with theirown hands-regarding it as something morethan the mere body of a man-and themselveslay it in the tomb" (Herodotus, 1990).

Considering the universal recognition of therights of relatives, it not surprising that this isone issue upon which, as far as I know, allbioarchaeologists agree: if skeletal remains canbe identified as those of a known individual forwhom specific biological descendants can betraced, the disposition of those remains, includ-ing possible reburial, should be decided by theclosest living relatives.

Many of the ethical dilemmas that skeletalbiologists face arise not out of a disagreementover this fundamental principle of ethical be-havior but, instead, over how the rights of de-scendants should be recognized in real-worldsituations. The first problematic area concernshow the rights of relatives with different rela-tionships to the dead person should be bal-anced against each other. In modern legalsystems authority over the dead is judged usinga rigid hierarchy of rights. For example, theUniform Anatomical Gifts Act establishes thefollowing order of priority for people autho-rized to make decisions about the authorizationof removal of body parts: (1) the spouse, (2) an

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adult son or daughter, (2) either parent,(4) adult brother or sister, (5) the person's legalguardian at the time of death, (6) any other per-son authorized to dispose of the body. Evenhere, there is considerable room for culturalvariation in rules governing control over thedead. In China, for example, because of its thepervasive patriarchal family structure, author-ity of the wife regarding funeral arrangementsis likely to be less than that of the male mem-bers of his patriline (Cooper, 1998).

In contrast to the agreement about givinglineal descendants control over the dispositionof the remains of close relatives, there is a noconsensus concerning the question of the ap-propriate way to decide the disposition of hu-man remains that are distantly related toliving people. What is the ethical way to de-cide the disposition of the remains of peoplewho are many generations removed from anyliving person? How shall we weigh the manyattenuated genetic and cultural ties that linklarge numbers of living people to ancestorswho lived thousands, hundreds of thousands,or even millions of years ago? Which livingindividuals should be granted the moral au-thority to decide the disposition of our ancientancestors?

The basic elements of the dilemma can bebetter understood from a scientific perspectiveby considering how the genetic and culturalconnections that link modern people and ear-lier generations vary as a function of time. Thefirst problem is that the more distant an ances-tor is from a descendant, the more descendantsthere are sharing the same genetic relationshipto that ancestor. The variables that influencethe number of shared ancestors that living peo-ple have are complex. However, one fact is in-disputable: as we probe more deeply into ourfamily tree, the probability of discovering anancestor we share with a large number of otherliving people increases dramatically. In a lin-eage of people who each had two children anddid not marry relatives, it would take sevengenerations, or about 250 years, to produceover five billion modern descendants. People,of course, tend to marry relatives and not

everyone has the same number of children.Even if we account for these complicating vari-ables, the fact remains that many living peopleare likely to be related to an individual wholived many generations ago.

If we really believe that relatives should de-cide the disposition of ancestral remains, howcan we identify those descendants and allowthem to make a collective decision about theproper treatment of their relative's bones? Theproblem of linking modern people to ourhunter-gatherer ancestors is complicated bythe highly mobile lifestyle of such popula-tions. This decreases the likelihood that the an-cestral remains of a modern group will befound in the territory in which that moderngroup currently resides. In situations of popu-lation replacement, it is in fact more likely thatthe modern people who now live in an areawere directly responsible for the exterminationof the ancient people who formerly occupiedthat same territory.

Even in cases where it is clear that descen-dants continue to occupy the land of their an-cestors, there is still the problem posed by theexpansion of living descendants with increas-ing genealogical remoteness. In an area suchas Europe, with a relatively stable gene pool,someone who died more than a few hundredyears ago is likely to be related to hundreds ofthousands, if not millions of living people. Forinstance, DNA studies conducted on the 5000-year-old mummified body recently found inthe Tyrolean Alps suggest a genetic relation-ship between this person and the 300 millionor so contemporary people living in centraland northern Europe (Handt et al., 1994). Thisof course does not include many millions ofadditional people living in North America andelsewhere with ancestral ties to northernEurope.

In the Western Hemisphere the problem ofassigning rights for the control of ancestral re-mains to living descendants is complicated bygene flow between indigenous Americans andthe people of Europe, Africa, and Asia. For ex-ample, geneticists estimate that 31 % of thecontemporary gene pool of people identified as

Hispanic or Mexican Americans is derivedfrom their Native American ancestors (Gardneret al., 1984; Ilanis et al., 1991). These NativeAmerican descendants are thus numerically avery significant component of the New Worldpopulation and, if demographic trends con-tinue, are likely to replace non-Hispanic Euro-Americans as the ethnic majority in the UnitedStates in less than one life span (Edmondson,1996; Nicklin, 1997). If we believe that de-scendants should have a right to decide the dis-position of the remains of their ancestors, thenwe need to find a way to incorporate the viewsof Hispanic Americans into the processthrough which the disposition of ancientAmerican remains is decided.

Some people sec focusing on genetic rela-tionships in this way as a myopic and mis-guided biological reductionism. After all, isnot a person's cultural background more im-portant than the genetic links that tie them toearlier generations'! From this perspective,there are two types of ancestors, genetic andcultural, and it is the cultural link that a personfeels they have with the people who lived inthe past that. counts. Although the idea of lim-iting authority to make decisions about the dis-position of ancient human remains to peoplewho share the deceased person's cultural iden-tity makes some sense, applying this ethicalprinciple is extremely problematic in real-world situations. if the strength of a modernperson's belief in their cultural link to an ear-lier person's remains is to be the measure ofmoral authority, how are we to evaluate the rel-ative validity of such beliefs?

To give a specific example, many NativeAmericans see the intrusions of the "New Age"movement into their cultural identity as the ap-propriation of Native American spiritual tradi-tions by outsiders who are destroying Indianspirituality and contributing to white racismand genocide (Geertz, 1996, Hernandez-Avila,1996; Jocks, 1996; Johnson W, 1996b; Kehoe,1 996; Smith, 1991; Specktor, 1989). Is it ethi-cally acceptable to give the same authority tothe beliefs of people who received their cul-tural identity during a psychotherapy session in

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS 23

which it was revealed to them that they are thereincarnation of an Inca princess, that we giveto descendants with demonstrable genetic linksto earlier populations? This is where the rejec-tion of scientific evidence and the uncondi-tional acceptance of cultural relativism canbecome problematic (Goldstein and Kintigh,1990:587-588).

It is also fair to ask at what point does a liv-ing person's cultural connection to a dead per-son become so attenuated that it merges intothe common cultural heritage of all people, andthus no longer provides a moral basis for spe-cial rights and control. Several cultural vari-ables could be considered relevant here: ashared language, common religious practices,and so on. The difficulty is weighing the sig-nificance of such disparate cultural traits, espe-cially in the context of ancient remains andcultural evolution.

This issue of cultural continuity is a con-tentious one, in part, because when indigenouscultures are marginalized, disrupted, and drivento the brink of extinction, remnants of the past,including ancestral human remains, become in-creasingly important as symbols of cultural op-pression and survival. This inverse relationshipbetween concern over ancestral remains andcultural continuity is illustrated by the differ-ences between Latin America and NorthAmerica in concern over ancestral remains andrepatriation issues. In Latin American coun-tries where a strong sense of "Indianness" hasbeen integrated into the national identity, hu-man remains are excavated and displayed with-out opposition in museums. In this context,they serve as symbols of a national past that isshared by and important to all citizens (Ube-laker and Grant, 1989). The government of theUnited States, in contrast, has historically con-sidered Native Americans as outsiders to bedealt with by isolating them on reservationsand suppressing their indigenous languagesand beliefs to facilitate converting them intofunctional members of the dominant Euro-Amcrican culture. These government policieshave devastated Native American cultures andcontributed enormously to the hostility Indian

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people feel over issues related to the control ofancestral remains.

In the United States, a legislative attempt hasbeen made to use a combination of biologicaland cultural continuity as the basis for givingmodern indigenous groups the rights overancient skeletal remains. The Native Amer-ican Graves Protection and Repatriation Act(NAGPRA) gives federally recognized tribesthat can demonstrate a "cultural affiliation" toancestral remains the authority to control theirdisposition. In this legal context, cultural affili-ation means "a relationship of shared groupidentity which can be reasonably traced histori-cally or prehistorically between a present daygroup and an identifiable earlier group." In thisstatute, cultural affiliation is established when"the preponderance of the evidence-based ongeographical, kinship, biological, archeologi-cal, linguistic, folklore, oral tradition, historicalevidence, or other information or expert opin-ion-reasonably leads" to the conclusion that afederally recognized tribe is culturally affiliatedwith an "earlier group."

Although NAGPRA has benefited manyfederally recognized tribes and has had the pos-itive effect of increasing communication be-tween Native Americans and bioarchaeologists,its exclusion of Native Americans who lackfederal recognition raises serious ethical issues.It is derided by some Native Americans whosee it as another step in the long history of at-tempts to define "Native American groups" inways that facilitate their control and manipula-tion by oppressive governmental agencies. InCalifornia, for instance, many groups that byany even-handed definition are authentic"tribes" have failed to receive official recogni-tion by the federal government, or have hadtheir federal recognition removed, and thus aredenied full access to the provision of NAGPRA(Goldberg, 1997; Walker, 1995).

Again, these legalistic considerations andacademic concerns over how to establish a con-nection between the living and the dead seemstrange to indigenous people whose religiousbeliefs resolve such issues for them. Many in-digenous people are creationists who reject the

idea that all modern people share a commonancestor. Instead, some believe that their tribeis the result of a special creation and that theyhave lived in the area currently occupied bytheir tribe since the beginning of time. Suchbeliefs remove any uncertainties regarding an-cestral relationships and result in acrimoniousdisputes between scientists and tribal memberssuch as those that have occurred over theKennewick skeleton (Hastings and Sampson,1997; Lemonick, 1996; Morell, 1998; Petit,1998; Preston, 1997; Slayman, 1997).

The Preservation Ethic

The final universally accepted principle ofbioarchaeologists is the preservation ethic.Human remains are a source of unique insightsinto the history of our species. They constitutethe "material memory" of the people who pre-ceded us and thus provide a direct meansthrough which we may come to know our an-cestors. Because we believe that the lessonsthat the remains of our ancestors can teach usabout our common heritage have great value tomodern people, it is an ethical imperative towork to preserve as much as possible of this in-formation for future generations. This positionis championed by governments throughout theworld who support archaeological research, en-courage the conservation and preservation ofarchaeological resources, and discourage un-necessary destruction of archaeological sites(Knudson, 1986:397).

As caretakers of this fundamental source ofinformation on the biological history of ourspecies, we need to promote the long-termpreservation of skeletal collections and in thisway ensure that future generations will havethe opportunity to learn from them and in thisway know about and understand that history(Turner, 1986). Prehistoric research, includingosteological study, is one way that our commonheritage can be fully revealed (White andFolkens, 1991:418-423). This position isforcefully expressed in the Society for Amer-ican Archaeology Statement Concerning theTreatment of Human Remains:

WHEREAS human remains constitute part ofthe archaeological record and provide uniqueinformation about demography, genetic rela-tionship, diet, and disease which is of specialsignificance in interpreting descent, healthand nutritional status in living and ancient hu-man groups; and

WHEREAS education and research in the an-thropological, biological, social and forensicsciences require that collections of humanskeletal remains be available to responsiblescholars; and

WHEREAS the study of humankind's pastshould not discriminate against any biologicalor cultural group:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that theSociety for American Archaeology deploresthe indiscriminant reburial of human skeletalremains and opposes reburial of any humanskeletal remains except in situations wherespecific lineal descendants can be traced andit is the explicit wish of these living descen-dants that remains be reburied rather than be-ing retained for research purposes; and thatno remains should be reburied without appro-priate study by physical anthropologists withspecial training in skeletal biology unless lin-eal descendants explicitly oppose such study.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that theSociety for American Archaeology encourageclose and effective communication with ap-propriate groups and with individual scholarswho study human remains that may have bio-logical or cultural affinity to those groups(SAA, 1984).

The preservation ethic is based on the scien-tific premise that there are aspects of our sharedreality that have the potential to be brought intosharper focus through the examination of an-cient human skeletal remains. The fact that eachperson sees the world through a slightly differ-ent cultural lens does not mean that it is impos-sible to translate between these differentexperiences to find a common basis of under-standing. The physical facts that we have for de-ciding what happened in the past are notinfinitely plastic and this places material con-straints on our culturally biased interpretations.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF SKELETAL BIOLOGISTS

25

The progressive aspect of creating the moreaccurate view of reality that we strive for is animportant justification for the preservation ofskeletal collections. Most scientists recognizethe cultural influences that focus their observa-tions on certain aspects of reality and color theinferences they make based on those observa-tions (Glock, 1995; Tomaskova, 1995; Wylie,1989). Although we know that our conclusionsare to some extent distorted by our cultural bi-ases, we take comfort in the fact that these dis-tortions will be detected and corrected throughfuture research by others with different culturalperspectives.

For this self-correcting aspect of the scien-tific method to be operative, the evidence uponwhich our conclusions are based must be avail-able for scrutiny by future researchers. Inexperimental fields such as physics, this is ac-complished through repeating experiments. Inhistorical sciences such as bioarchaeology, ourreconstructions of what happened in the pastare refined and corrected through the reexami-nation of collections using new analytical tech-niques and theoretical perspectives.

During the past twenty years, the rate atwhich this self-correcting process operateshas increased markedly as a result of therestudy of skeletal collections in museums us-ing newly developed analytical techniquesthat have greatly expanded the types of infor-mation we can retrieve from ancient humanremains. Especially exciting are new chemicaltechniques that provide precise informationon the types of food people ate (Hult andFessler, 1998; Stott and Evershed, 1996;Tuross and Stathoplos, 1993; and see Katzen-berg, Chapter 11, and Sandford and Weaver,Chapter 12), procedures for reconstructingancestral relationships through DNA analysis(Hagelberg et al., 1994; Stone and Stoneking,1993; Von Haeseler et al., 1996, and seeStone, Chapter 13). New techniques are alsobeing developed for reconstructing the dis-ease histories of human populations throughthe analysis of pathogen-specific bone pro-teins (Drancourt et al., 1998; Hoffman, 1998;Ortner et al., 1992).

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The development of these new, enormouslyinformative, analytical techniques underscoreshow valuable human remains are as a source ofinsights into the history of our species. The in-formation content of a cultural product such asstone tool is very meager in comparison to thewealth of biological and cultural informationthat can be extracted from a human skeleton.The historical information an artifact yields islimited to data on the activity patterns andmental processes that can be inferred from itsphysical properties, form, and archaeologicalcontext. As Carver (1996) has pointed out,there is a subjective aspect to the identificationof the artifacts of human cultural activity thatare measurable, historically meaningful entitieswithin the corpus of mud and stones that hu-mans have left as the traces of their past activi-ties. Through archaeological research, whatwas once muck is transformed into monumentsand the thunderstones of one generation be-come the flint axes of the next.

The information contained within thestructure of the human skeleton, in contrast, isof a different sort. It is not a culture-depen-dent symbolic construct. Skeletal remainsinstead have their basis in adaptive physiolog-ical and demographic processes operating atthe individual and species levels. Encodedwithin the molecular and histological struc-ture of skeletal tissues is a detailed record ofthe person's childhood development and adulthistory of metabolic responses to the chal-lenges encountered in his or her natural andsociocultural environment. This informationcan be supplemented by an equally richrecord of ancestral relationships and the evo-lutionary history of our species recorded inthe structure of the DNA molecules preservedwithin a skeleton. The information about his-torical events encoded in the skeletons of ourancestors can be thought of as a complex mes-sage from the past that we can decode throughbioarchaeological research. Each skeleton hasa unique story to tell about that individual'slife as well as the evolutionary events thatconstitute the history of our species. By work-ing to preserve ancient skeletal remains, we

ensure that future generations will be able togain access to the important historical infor-mation they contain.

SOURCES OF CONFLICT

The ethical principles described above have aninherent potential for conflict. The preservationethic, with its basis in the belief that the infor-mation that skeletal studies can yield is of greatvalue to all people, can easily conflict with theethical principle that the descendants shouldhave the right to decide the disposition of theirancestor's remains. If we recognize the validityof the interests of both descendants and scien-tists in human skeletal remains, how do we dealwith the ethical problems that arise when thepreservation ethic conflicts with the desires ofdescendants?

When the remains of close relatives are in-volved, there is unanimity among bioarchae-ologists that the concerns of descendantsshould override any scientific interests inthose remains. Ethical dilemmas, however,frequently do arise when the ancestor-descen-dant relationship is less clear-cut. How do webalance the scientific value of very ancientskeletal remains against the concerns of mod-ern people who are remotely related to thosesame individuals?

In balancing the scientific value of archae-ological collections against descendant rights,most scientists see the strength of the ancestor-descendant relationship as a continuum that be-comes attenuated with succeeding generations.At one end of this continuum we have remainsof people with living children and grandchil-dren who have an undisputed right to deter-mine the disposition of their close relative'sremains. At the other we have the remains ofvery distant relatives, such as the earliest mem-bers of our species, to which all modern peopleare equally related. From this evolutionary per-spective, descendant rights are seen as decreas-ing as the number of generations separating theliving and the dead increases. At some point,claims by one modern group of descendants to

decide the disposition of ancient human re-mains are counterbalanced by the right of allpeople to have access to the unique source ofevidence on the history of our species that hu-man skeletal remains provide. How do we de-

cide when the scientific value of skeletalevidence is sufficient to override the concernsof remotely related descendants?

There is no easy answer to the question ofhow to balance descendant rights against theright of all people to know about the past, be-cause the values skeletal biologists and descen-dants attach to human remains are essentiallyincommensurable. Part of the problem arisesfrom the fact that many modern indigenouspeople do not accept the idea that the ancestor-descendant relationship becomes attenuatedwith time. Instead they see the spirits of theirancestors, no matter how distant, as an integralpart of the modern community of the living.Nor do they see themselves as closely relatedto the rest of humanity. Instead they believethat they are the products of a special creationthat occurred in the area their tribe currentlyoccupies and this is an issue of faith aboutwhich scientific evidence is irrelevant (John-son G, 1996). For instance, Armand Minthorn,a member of the Umatilla tribe, which claimsthe 9500-year-old Kennewick skeleton, madethis point when he stated: "We know how timebegan and how Indian people were created.They can say whatever they want, the scien-tists" (The Invisible Man, 1996). The implica-tion of such beliefs is that all human remains,no matter how ancient, if they are from the areain which a group believes they were created,are those of their direct ancestors.

Although such creationist interpretations ofthe history of our species seem strange to manyscientists, they are shared by a substantial num-ber of nonindigenous people. For example, arecent survey found that about 20% of the peo-ple in the United States shared the Christianbelief derived from a literal interpretation ofthe bible that God created the cosmos about5000 to 10,000 years ago (Goldhaber, 1996).

Some archaeologists argue that the utilitar-ian approach of attempting to balance scien-

SOURCES OF CONFLICT

27

tific value against descendant rights is an eth-nocentric attempt to frame the problem withinthe "Eurowestern" system of cultural valuesthat emphasizes finding solutions to problemsthat maximize benefits and minimize costs(Klesert and Powell, 1993). We can all agreethat we will never find a culture-free metric forweighing the value of knowing what actuallyhappened in the past against the concernsdescendants have about ancestral remains.However, even if we agree that the benefit ofgiving control over ancestral remains to peoplewho identify themselves as descendants alwaysoutweighs their value as a source of scientificinformation, we still face the problem of deter-mining who should be able to claim standing asa descendant and what is the ethical thing to dowhen there are competing claims.

When dealing with close relatives, wherethe genealogical link between ancestor and de-scendant is known, allocating descendantrights over the remains of their relatives isfairly straightforward. For example, we mightestablish a hierarchy that gives a person'sspouse, children, parents, and siblings the au-thority to control the disposition of their re-mains. Even such a simple scheme as this isopen to charges of ethnocentrism because itreifies western kinship systems that emphasizethe importance of genetic relatedness as a cri-teria for moral authority and invests the rightsto make such decisions in a person's nuclearfamily. Other societies might give greater au-thority to elder members of a person's patrilineor matriline, or disregard the modern Westernpreoccupation with genetic relatedness alto-gether in favor of another culture-dependentconception of relatedness.

Such cultural differences in ways of con-ceiving the ancestor-descendant relationshipcan even transcend the species boundary. Forexample, I know people who claim the moralauthority to remove the bones of dinosaursfrom museum collections because they believe,based on their creation myths, that these re-mains are those of their ancestors before theywere transformed into human form. What arewe to do with people with sincerely held

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beliefs about an ancestor-descendant relation-ships such as this when those beliefs conflictwith our own?

Even if we are willing to recognize the va-lidity of such claims and agree that the moralauthority of belief in a close ancestor-descen-dant relationship always outweighs any scien-tific value skeletal collections might have, weare still faced with the dilemma of decidingwhat to do when there are conflicting claimsfor the same skeletal collections. This problemis vividly illustrated by several recent cases inthe United States in which people with differ-ent beliefs about the past have disputed eachother's assertions of moral authority to controlarchaeological collections. In Hawaii, 15 feder-ally recognized native groups became involvedin a dispute over the disposition of ancestral re-mains from Mokapu on the island of Oahu(NAGPRA, 1994). One of these groups in-sisted that scientific research be conducted onthe remains of these ancient individuals to de-termine their ancestral relationships while oth-ers viewed such work as a deep insult to thespirits of the their ancestors. In a similar case,Stanford University acceded to the reburial de-mands of one group of Ohlone Indians withoutscientific analysis over the objections of otherOhlone people who, from the Western ge-nealogical perspective, were equally related tothose remains (Gross, 1989; Workman, 1990).Another acrimonious fight over descendantrights has arisen in the American Southwestbetween the Navajo and Zuni Indians as part ofa government-instigated land deal that pro-hibits the Navajo from burying their dead incertain traditional burial areas and requiresthem to renounce claims on sacred sites(Benedek, 1992; Cockburn, 1997). Both tribeshave publicly asserted their ancestral rights tothe remains of what archaeologists call theAnasazi culture. In other disputes, people whohave documentary evidence that they are de-scendant of the indigenous people from an areahave objected to the descendant rights claimedby people who lack such documentation(Erlandson et al., 1998; Haley et al., 1997;Kelley, 1997).

One option for dealing with the conflictsthat arise when several groups of people assertthe moral authority that comes with belief indescendancy from distant ancestors is to takerefuge in the legal system where lawyers,politicians, government functionaries, and po-litically astute special interest groups can wres-tle with each other to find a solution to thevexing question of who should have legalstanding as a descendant. Although they appearto envisage possible exceptions in cases of "ex-traordinary scientific value," this is in essencewhat Klesert and Powell (1993) suggest whenthey argue that "we must abide by the prefer-ences of the legally recognized descendants" indisputes concerning the excavation and analy-sis of ancient burials. For those who view ourlegal systems as distillations of the moral prin-ciples of the people that laws govern, turningthe ethical problem of defining "real" descen-dants over to the courts is very appealing. Thispolitical strategy, of course, has the added prac-tical advantage of not eliciting legal sanctions.The moral problem of relying on laws to decidewhich groups have the right to determine thedisposition of human remains has its basis inthe faulty assumption that we all live in just so-cieties. Laws have, after all, in the recent pastbeen used as the mechanisms through whichgroups have been defined by democraticallyelected governments for purposes of apartheid,slavery, and genocide.

The difficulties associated with legislativesolutions to the ethical problem of determiningthe disposition of skeletal collections are illus-trated by the problems that have arisen in Israeland the United States through legislative at-tempts to resolve disputes over the control ofskeletal collections. Ultraorthodox Jewish or-ganizations in Israel, such as the Atra Kadisha,who regard all academic study involving hu-man remains a violation of Jewish law, havelong been at loggerheads with physical anthro-pologists over the excavation and the handlingof human remains, including skeletons of ex-treme antiquity such as those of Neanderthals( Watzman, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c). Owing tothe compromises necessary for coalitions of

political parties to maintain control of theIsraeli government, court rulings have been is-sued that make the study of unearthed humanremains impossible.

In the United States, the Native AmericanGraves Protection and Repatriation Act institu-tionalizes long-standing inequities in the treat-ment of federally recognized and non-federallyrecognized descendants (Walker, 1998). Par-ticularly troubling from an ethical standpoint isits failure to acknowledge the existence of au-thentic descendant groups that, for one reasonor another, have either failed to receive or re-jected federal tribal recognition. This omissionis especially unfortunate for the many federallyunrecognized descendants in California and theeastern United States where the vagaries of thecolonial process allowed the government toavoid giving Indian tribes the rights of self-determination that go along with federal recog-nition. Even if such federally unrecognizedgroups were given legal standing as descen-dants, the law would still present ethical prob-lems because, with the minor exception ofgranting rights to people who can show a directgenealogical connection to the remains ofknown individual, it fails to recognize therights of the many people of Native Americandescent who lack any tribal affiliation.

RESOLVING CONFLICTS

If we cannot rely on our legal systems to makedifficult ethical decisions concerning who de-scendants are and under what conditions theirrights should take precedence over the preser-vation ethic, what basis is there for finding eq-uitable solutions that balance these potentiallyconflicting ethical principles? First, it is impor-tant to recognize that there is no inherent con-flict between the maintenance of skeletalcollections for scientific research and respectfor the dead. As I previously mentioned, inmany countries research upon and the publicdisplay of ancestral remains are matters of na-tional pride. In other situations, arrangementscan often be made that satisfy the religious and

RESOLVING CONFLICTS

29

symbolic concerns of modern descendantswhile allowing scientific research on ancestralremains to continue. At St. Bride's Church,London, the skeletons of people with knowndescendants whose burials were disturbed dur-ing the German bombings of World War II arerespectfully maintained in a special roomwhere they are available for scientific research(Huda and Bowman, 1995; Scheuer andBowman, 1995). In this way, the religious andsymbolic concerns of descendants are re-spected, while at the same time making it pos-sible for these remains to continue to yieldimportant insights into the lives of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Londoners that are notadequately documented in written records(Walker, 1997, 2000).

In all societies, cultural understandings ofsacredness and ethical behavior are constantlybeing reshaped in response to changing socialrealities. This is especially true for the issuessurrounding the treatment of ancient humanremains because the social context of bio-archaeological research is a modern one notconfronted by earlier generations. For many in-digenous societies the curation of ancestral re-mains and their study is a new phenomenonthat presents practical problems requiring thedevelopment of new rituals, new conceptionsof sacredness, and new beliefs concerningwhat is respectful and disrespectful behavior.In other societies, especially sedentary ones ac-customed to maintaining large, intensivelyused cemeteries, a long history of facing thepractical and symbolic problems posed by thedisturbance and handling of ancestral remainshas resulted in traditional solutions. For exam-ple, the Chumash Indians of southern Cali-fornia, with whom I have worked for the pasttwenty-five years, had specialists called li-wimpshit, which means "custodian of the alge-bra," who were familiar with the humanskeleton and the art of arranging bones. Thesemedical practitioners not only could set bones,but they could also arrange all the bones of thehuman skeleton properly, and determinewhether those ancestral bones had once be-longed to a man or a woman (Walker and

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Hudson, 1993:46, 48). The need for someonequalified to deal with human bone derivedfrom Chumash burial practices, which empha-size the importance of having the remains ofthe dead near to the living. Cemeteries were,therefore, located adjacent to or within vil-lages. As the size of Chumash settlementsgrew, so did the size of their cemeteries, andthis frequently necessitated the excavation anddisturbance of ancestral remains (King, 1969).

Although the social context of the issuessurrounding the treatment of the dead that themodern Chumash face are very different fromthose they confronted in the past, traditionalbeliefs about the treatment of the dead haveserved as a basis for creating a situation inwhich bioarchaeological research can continuewhile ensuring that due respect is shown fortheir dead. Through working with tribal mem-bers over the years, my colleagues and I havedeveloped a cooperative arrangement throughwhich Chumash ancestral remains and associ-ated burial objects are being repatriated fromother universities and museums to a safe keep-ing place at my campus. This is highly desir-able from the perspective of descendantsbecause of our location near the center of thearea historically occupied by the tribe. We haveconstructed a specially designed subterraneanossuary to receive these remains as part of theconstruction of our new social sciences and hu-manities building. This ossuary was designedthrough consultation with both federally andnon-federally recognized tribal members to en-sure that it meets their spiritual needs, and alsosolves the practical problem of providing secu-rity against future disturbance that would beunavailable in an unguarded reburial area. Theossuary also makes it possible for scientific re-search on these collections to continue underthe supervision of descendants so that futuregenerations can gain a deeper understanding ofthe history and accomplishments of the tribe.

Mutually acceptable solutions such as this,which balance spiritual and practical concernsof descendants against the important historicalinformation skeletal research can provide, arethe outcome of personal relationships, mutual

trust and respect, and the recognition of com-mon interests. Such relationships require timeto nurture. My academic colleagues and I havespent our entire professional careers workingwith Chumash descendants to protect and learnfrom the archaeological record left by their an-cestors. This has involved assisting descen-dants and local law enforcement authorities inthe apprehension and prosecution of grave rob-bers and looters and actively working to mini-mize the threats urban development poses fortheir sacred sites and archaeological resources.At the request of descendants we have givenseminars and workshops on archaeology, oste-ology, and the intricacies of the laws that gov-ern the management and protection ofarchaeological resources. Whenever possible,we have actively involved descendants in ourresearch projects. Such collaborations areenormously rewarding, not only on a personallevel, but also professionally, because of theimportant insights descendants can provideinto the history of their culture.

Not all groups have religious traditions thatcan be easily built upon to allow scientific re-search conducted on the remains of the dead.The strong objections ultraorthodox Jewishhave to any skeletal studies already have beenmentioned (Watzman, 1996c). As the claims ofHopi and the Navajo to archaeological remainsfrom the ancient Anasazi culture show, it iseasy for the control of bones and burial sites tobecome enmeshed in larger battles over unre-lated economic and social issues concerningthe control of land and natural resources, envi-ronmental preservation, and so on. This ofcourse greatly complicates the problem offinding a basis for compromise. Sometimescollaboration with descendants may be diffi-cult or impossible owing to antagonism towardWestern science, and strong traditional beliefsabout the retention of a person's spirit withirtheir bones. Some native Hawaiians, for exam-ple, believe that people possess mana , which-after death resides in the bones, and have ar-gued in court that the publication of informa-tion about skeletal collections is offensive and will steal the manaof their ancestors (Kana

hele, 1993). Many Plains Indian tribes alsohave strong beliefs about the residence of souls

in their ancestral remains. This, along with an-

imosity stemming from racism, genocidal at-tacks by the U.S. military, cultural suppressionin boarding schools, and economic marginal-ization on reservations makes the prospects forthe preservation of skeletal collections frommost of the Plains area bleak (Ubelaker,1994:395).

In situations such as these it may be impos-sible to obtain a compromise that allows skele-tal research to continue. However, from thepersonal experiences I have had in workingwith many different groups of indigenous peo-ple, once the shroud of mystery associated withwhat osteologists actually do is removedthrough direct contacts between people, it is of-ten possible to find a foundation upon whichmutual understanding and cooperation can bebuilt. The most obvious basis for developingsuch collaborations is in the identification andanalysis of ancient human remains that are in-advertently disturbed through erosion, for ex-ample, or during construction projects. In suchsituations, the value of close collaboration be-tween osteologists and descendants is obvious.After it has been decided that remains are in-deed human, the issue of whether or not theyare modern (and thus possibly relevant to aforensic investigation) needs to be resolved. Ifthey are indeed ancient, the question of whichmodern group of people they are affiliatedwith needs to be considered. This issue is espe-cially important to some indigenous peoplewho have strong religious sanctions against theburial of non-group members in their cemeter-ies. The value of osteological research is alsoself-evident in forensic investigations relatingto the prosecution of grave robbers. I have col-laborated with Native Americans in several ofsuch cases. In one, we matched a fragment of amandible confiscated from a suspect's home,with another piece of the same mandible thattribal members had recovered from the area ofan ancient grave disturbed by looters. This in-controvertible evidence connecting the defen-dant with the crime scene resulted in a guilty

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When skeletal collections are lost owing toour inability to find equitable solutions thatbalance the concerns of modern descendantsagainst the need to preserve collections so thatfuture generations will have substantive infor-mation about the past, it is perhaps of some so-lace to remember that we live in an entropicworld in which the natural processes of decayand disintegration and the economic and socialrealities of modern life continuously conspireto destroy the faint traces our ancestors haveleft for us in the archaeological record. We can-not turn this tide. All we can do is work to pre-serve as much of the physical evidence of ourcommon heritage as possible. Those ancestralremains and the facts about the history of ourspecies that they reveal will be our legacy tofuture generations.

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